Red’s Book Reviews: The Likeness by Tana French

Okay, I am going to break the premise of this book down to a couple points.

1.  A female detective recently removed from the Murder squad in Dublin and still recovering from a botched case (read Into the Woods by Tana French) that essentially cost Det. Maddox her partner and best friend, her preferred career, and her identity.

2. A murder victim that in fact passes as Det. Maddox’s doppelganger and even had been assuming one of Det. Maddox’s undercover aliases prior to her death.

3.  Det. Maddox is able to infiltrate the victim’s life and social network by not disclosing the death to anyone and crack the case. In that time, you learn a little about the provincial politics of Ireland that persist through generation.

4.  Det. Maddox survives an identity crisis created by her previous case and catalyzed by taking the identity of her murder victim.

I generally like French’s writing – it’s always a bit haunted and deceptive – but I always find that I struggle to retain what actually happened in the book. I read Into the Woods a few years ago, and I spent half of the time I was reading this one, trying to remember what happened. A week after putting down The Likeness, and I can already feel it slipping away. Still, if you like detective stories, this is a pretty good one. I have one more on the shelf to read from French, and hope to do so before the end of the year.

Up next: The World According to Garp by John Irving