The Secret Place (Dublin Murder Squad, Book 5)

Is there another writer named “Tara French”?. I am being snarky here, of course, but after reading all her previous novels, about the Dublin Murder squad, I just had to ask this question. I will not give anything away for those that want to lose several hours of their life they will never get back. Just read all the other “1” ratings because that is exactly what I am going to echo myself. As soon as I got to the paranormal references, I quit. It was like putting the icing on a inedible cake! RARELY, do I not finish a book and I read daily. Like Danny Glover says in Lethal Weapon “I am too old for this s**t!

Tana French takes on the fraught atmosphere of a girls' boarding school in the leafy suburbs of Dublin in her fifth entry in the Dublin Murder Squad series. As with the earlier books in the series, this one features a different detective but one that we have met before in an earlier book, Faithful Place, and it includes other characters that we've met before, as well as a new female detective in the Murder Squad, Antoinette Conway.The detective that we met before is Stephen Moran, who, when we encounter him this time, is working Cold Cases. He is contacted by Holly Mackey, Undercover chief Frank Mackey's daughter, who has information about a murder that took place a year before.Moran met Holly when she was a nine-year-old and he and his partner were investigating a murder in Faithful Place, where Frank Mackey grew up. Holly is now a 16-year-old and she is attending St. Kilda's School. She is part of a tight-knit group of four girls.The previous year, a handsome, popular young man from the boys' boarding school next door was killed on St. Kilda's property. His murder was investigated by Antoinette Conway and her partner but they never solved it. Now, Holly brings Stephen a card that she found posted on the school's board called "The Secret Place" where students can post things anonymously. It features a picture of the boy who was killed with the caption, "I know who killed him."Detective Moran takes the card to the Murder Squad and meets with Detective Conway. She asks him to work with her (she no longer has a partner) and be a fresh pair of eyes on the case to investigate. The two head out to the school to interrogate students once again. The rest of the action in the book takes place on this one single day with flashbacks to the events of the year before.Most of the investigation is focused on Holly and her three friends and a rival group of four girls. The rival group is the popular clique in the school and Holly and her friends are considered the "freaks."Recreating the world of teenage girls and their relationships, filled with insecurities, envy, raging hormones, and occasional cruelties must have been a daunting task for French. To accomplish it, she immerses us in teenspeak replete with "OMGs," "awesomesauce," "totes amazeballs," "hello?" at the end of sarcastic statements, and every sentence seems to end with a rising inflection of a question like the stereotypical Valley Girl. Considering the rich inner lives that these girls had, the use of such trite and cliched language was a bit jarring and sometimes downright irritating.Another thing that irritated me even more about the book was the supernatural aspect to it - the telekinetic powers that some of the girls supposedly had and the appearance of ghosts, none of which really seemed to have a point or to add anything to the plot. The ghosts might be explained by mass hysteria induced in suggestible young people, but still...The plot was an interesting one. It followed the pattern of French's previous books in that it started ever so slowly and built tension and suspense throughout. I also liked the characters. Conway and Moran made an intriguing team. I wonder if we'll see them again. Holly and her group were a captivating group of teenagers and their relationships with their rivals and with the boys from the neighboring school made for some riveting reading. And in the latter part of the book, we again get to observe Frank Mackey do his thing which is always diverting. But.But there was just something missing here. It wasn't really up to the high standard that French has set for herself. My initial thought was to award the book three or three-and-a-half stars, but since I don't usually do things by halves and since I am such a generous soul, I decided on four.

Because I so liked French's other books, I looked forward to this one. Imagine my surprise when about halfway through, I found myself thinking, "This is truly boring," and fighting the impulse to skip ahead to the ending just to get it over with.The story, which not only alternates between the points of view of the police and two groups of adolescent girls in the claustrophobic, mean-girl world of a boarding school but also between chronological markers, is cleverly structured. Essentially, the police investigation takes place over the course of a single day, but the section involving the girls, and the crime, arcs across many months. French is skillful in making the past collide with the present. But in the end, I found it hard to sustain an interest.Two things struck me as particularly distracting: The introduction of the paranormal--as a strategy by the murder police and as a type of power by some of the girls--didn't seem to me to move the story along. Rather, it made me think more than once, "Oh, come on!" The other distraction was the language used to describe the ways adolescent girls experience themselves and the world--another kind of mystical "we are as blooming flowers shot through with sparks of lightning" thing. While French does a good job evoking the often-chaotic interior world of young girls, she does way too much of it in this book.If The Secret Place was the first French book I'd read, I would never read another. But since I've been reading her work from the beginning, I can hope that this was an aberration, and that her next one will be better--more tightly written, more deeply drawn characters (and with every use of the word "totes" edited out!).

I'm currently working my way through the Tana French series, and her fifth novel, The Secret Place, is the only disappointment I've read so far. This story takes place over the course of one day at an all girl's boarding school, as detectives interview teenage girls and try to find the murderer of a popular boy from a nearby school. There are flashbacks throughout, but the interviews take place over the span of just one day, which I personally felt really limited this book's potential. The characters are poorly developed, the story is strange and hard to follow, and there were times when trying to keep the characters straight gave me a headache. They were all pretty much the same, and French really overdoes it with the teenage girl talk. Way too much "omg, like, hello, duh." The entire time I read it, I just kept thinking that Tana French is better than this. There really wasn't much mystery or suspense to this book, and to me, it is very out of place in Tana French's series. I was excited about the return of multiple characters from previous books, but this book was a huge letdown. I can honestly say I wish I had skipped this one. I was surprised by this book, because I have thoroughly enjoyed each of the other Tana French books I have read. This one, however, wasn't worth the time. It's slow paced, often boring, and very predictable. I'm hoping French will redeem herself in the next book, The Trespasser (which I've only just started, but it already shows more promise than The Secret Place). Unless you're like me, and you just have to read every book in a series, I would say skip this one.

Having just read French's 'In the Woods', I was eager to read another of her books, as I really enjoyed her debut novel. This one, however, tried my patience to the limit and in the end I binned it. A murdered boy is found on the grounds of a posh girls' boarding school and the crime remains unsolved for a year. A new piece of information re-ignites the investigation and sets the book in motion. One problem with this book is that 8 teenage girls are the chief suspects and there are pages and pages detailing the interviews. It is very hard for the reader to keep track of which girl is which - and two of the main characters have names beginning with 'J' which I find annoying. This makes it even harder to sort them all out. I had to keep reminding myself which girl was Julia and which was Joanne. The two detectives aren't nearly as interesting and engaging as the pair who solved the mystery of 'In the Woods'. It is actually hard to believe this book was written after 'In the Woods'. I think it may have been sitting in a drawer along with other rejected manuscripts, and then dusted off after the success of French's first published novel. I don't feel the writer has a great sense of teenage thinking or dialogue. It's very hard to get that right and she has not done it here. Anyway, halfway through the book I realized I had no interest in who killed the boy, and would have been happy for a fire to burn down the school and all the girls in it. So I binned the book and will never discover who killed Chris.

Giving up around half way through. Possibly the worst detective novel I've ever read. Corny dialogue from the hard boiled female lead detective - attempts at reproducing the conversational language of teenage girls read as very silly. The author has tried to develop an original style but the descriptive writing is pretentious. Police procedure aspect seems very unlikely with an officer wandering off to join another department at will - and an investigating officer rampaging around a sensitive murder investigation with no senior oversight - laughable. A strange supernatural theme appears at one point with characters being able to switch lights on and off apparently telepathically - but this then doesn't go anywhere - and if it's resolved later in the book you'll need more patience than me to wait for it. Worst thing is - nothing happens - it just drags on and on and on in the middle with no progress made in plot or characterisation. Utterly tedious.

I have greatly enjoyed and admired Tana French's previous novels, but this one has been a disappointment. I actually read the reviews first and was aware that many of the author's fans didn't like this book much, but since the book cost only a fraction of the others, I thought it was worth trying. I should have paid attention to those reviews, and I should have wondered why the publishers were selling this book so cheaply.The writing style is smooth, the background feels authentic, and the characterisation is superb, but the plot is only so-so, and the structure is weak.With eight main suspects, all eight of whom are teenage girls of the same age attending the same boarding school with the same interests and the same secrets, it's difficult to keep them apart. Halfway through the book I was finally able to differentiate them and appreciate their distinct personalities. But by that time, it was too late, and I couldn't remember who had said what.The structure is odd. It alternates between chapters from the point-of-view of the investigator after the murder happened, and chapters from the point of view of one of the eight teenage girls who are the main suspects. The structure might work but unfortunately it doesn't.The chapters from the PoV of the investigator, a fiercely ambitions dead-cases officer who wants to get into the murder squad at almost any price, who possess brilliant people skills yet isn't social, unfold at a good pace and are a pleasure to read. But the chapters from the various girls' perspectives... they don't work. In part this is because there are simply too many changes, and the reader needs to get into the head of a different person every view pages. In part it's because the chapters are all written in the same voice, not reflecting the distinct personalities of the point-of-view characters. And most annoyingly, in each chapter theres a break of point of view when, tucked at the end of an unconnected paragraph, there's the statement 'Chris as x-number weeks to live.' Since the girls didn't know Chris was going to get murdered, they couldn't have been aware how much time was left until his murder. So this jolted me out of their point of view into a God's-view (omniscient) perspective. And in the next sentence the reader is supposed to be back inside the girl's mind, worrying about make-up, breaking curfew, secret smokes and boys.If you're a fan of Tana French, by all means read this book. You may enjoy it. But if you're new, try one of her other books first (perhaps 'The Likeness'  The Likeness: Dublin Murder Squad: 2 (Dublin Murder Squad series)  ) to get an impression of what she can really do. The Likeness: Dublin Murder Squad: 2 (Dublin Murder Squad series)

Despite having many of her novels on my Kindle, this is my first Tana French experience.Overall, it was a good introduction to her writing and I have already purchased a few of the others in the Dublin Murder Squad series (those aren't on my Kindle already sadly).I love her writing which can be so evocative and poetic in parts. However, some of it felt a little slow in terms of advancing the plot. This was balanced out by the narrative structure, which flips from current day with the police investigation that Moran and Conway are undertaking; and one year previously when the body of Chris Harper, student at neighbouring boys school, is found in the grounds of St Kilda's girls boarding school. This second timeline is told through the eyes of the girls who may, or may not, be involved in his murder.I loved how Tana French created two friendship groups of 4 girls in each and then pitted them against one another. However, I did find it a little difficult to keep track of who was who at first. There is a section of the book where Conway and Moran interview each girl separately and this helped to straighten it out a little in my head. There were then a number of boys from the boys school and I had to keep reminding myself who was who there too!The way Conway and Moran handle the investigation is interesting as Conway is almost seen as the enemy to the girls but her male partner, Moran, is more adept in his interview techniques to get the most out of each different personality. The dynamic between the two detectives is excellent and I look forward to reading more involving them.The mystery kept me guessing and many nights I stayed up way to late to read 'just one more chapter'.My main negative in this book was the inclusion of supernatural elements. Thankfully, they weren't overt enough to put me off completely, but it did detract from my enjoyment of this as a mystery/crime novel. I think I understand why they were included but, for me, the book would have been stronger without it.A few of the reviews say that this is not French's best so I am just pleased that it gets even better from here.

I really liked it - school story, murder story, well depicted female protagonists are all things that appeal to me in a book.I really enjoyed the twin story lines and the book as a whole so much that I have now gone straight back to reread the action in chronological orderthat is to say the prologue and the even numbered chapters which give the backstory and immediate aftermath of the murder from the point of view of four school-friends. and then the odd numbered chapters which give the day long re-opened murder investigation a year after the crime was committed.I can see why the story would have annoyed some people in its style/content, but it's a good fit for me and I feel like I've got two books for the price of one.