Really 4.5 stars.

Let’s go through the four reasons this book shouldn’t have worked:
1. It was a reread. Not always good in the crime genre.
2. The premise is far fetched
3. It is not much of a mystery and there is very little detective work, clues, and suspects.
4. The prose is literally, descriptive and long winded.


1. LOL This was a reread for me but I didn’t realise it until about 50 pages in! So I have read this book first in the Tana French Murder squad series. Despite being a reread, this book had me unashamedly putting aside my other books to read this one exclusively for a while it as it was so compelling. So what was so compelling? I think my answer lies somewhere in 3 and 4 below.

2. The premise of this novel simply shouldn’t work. Lexi Madison was an undercover identity of Detective Cassie Maddox. Years after the Lexi identity is abandoned a dead body is found that looks like Cassie and is using the Lexi identity. Cassie must go undercover again as the new version of the Lexi identity to find the murderer. In a small country like Ireland where everyone knows everyone? As I said this shouldn’t work but it does. Tana French managed to dispel my disbelief and wrap me up in the world of Cassie/Lexie and the inhabitants of Whitethorn House.

3. The opening tells you all you need to know.

“This is Lexi Madison’s story, not mine. I’d love to tell you one without getting into the other, but it doesn’t work that way. I used to think I sewed us together at the edges with my own hands, pulled the stitches tight and I could unpick them anytime I wanted. Now I think it always ran deeper than that and further, underground; out of sight and way beyond my control. “

Tana French stories are about their complex characters, who happen to be police detectives solving a crime. As such, if this book is anything to go by, they should be read in order to understand the lead characters. This book deals as much with what happened to Cassie in the first book, Into the Woods, as it does with what is happening now. The murder mystery is secondary to how Cassie is going to cope with this new Lexie's life and the impact this is going to have on Cassie when she comes out of undercover?

4. Underlying the story is Tana French’s amazing prose. Easier to give an example than to explain.

"… the taste of undercover on my tongue again, the brush of it down the little hairs on my arms. I’d thought I remembered what it was like, every detail, but I’d been wrong: memories are nothing, soft as gauze against the ruthless razor-fineness of that edge, beautiful and lethal, one tiny slip and it’ll slice to the bone."


So overall this series is recommended to those who love a tale with compelling characters and spectacular prose.