Getting what you want fucks you up. It’s a problem most of humanity has, and a disconcerting one at that. Most of us has one of two problems: We don’t feel we deserve the things that nourish us; or else, we have no idea what is actually good for us. So, it’s an enticing idea to slip into another skin. Ostensibly the same; different in the imagined right ways.

This book follows Maddox’s disastrous previous case in the first book, with our boy Rob at the helm. This time it’s Cassie, pulled from the rubble, so to speak, offered an opportunity to go undercover as Lexie—an undercover identity she cooked up with her then superior, Frank—who has just been murdered. Only no one knows this. There’s a chance she can enter this person’s fake life, living off of the very borrowed ID Cassie created. They look much alike and she could, potentially, expose and catch the killer. It’s also an opportunity to find a way back to herself, or so she thinks. As she’s been a ghost of herself traversing the fallout of the last book.

What follows is a story I can’t help but compare to The Secret History. Sure, we don’t know the killer. But it’s actually not hard to guess. It really is a why done it. And what’s more is the house mates, closer than any normal friend group - living in a defunct, stately manor house that needs restoring, all too often make me think of the same group dynamics in TSH. As Lexie—I mean Cassie—becomes her character once again. She pines for the now infiltrated life. Full of mostly easy love and moments, beautiful and otherwise, that will no doubt haunt her life forever. Especially as she’s conning them into a future where this group is shattered completely and irrevocably.

She is the glue holding them together, and she hasn’t got much choice but to aim and take fire both throughout. On both physical and the emotional front. Once again French proves she is methodical and cares little for traditional genre conventions and pacing, and can completely deliver the reader into a satisfying and immensely thought provoking experience (at least, for my part). Quite smartly, she also has a little carrot dangling for those who have read the previous book. The phone conversation between Cassie and Rob near the end has itched me since reading. Is there an answer to what Rob thought?

While the prose here aren’t as lyrical and gripping, it does fit Cassie far more so. Another noir subversion probably wouldn’t have fit. Cassie’s voice, at first was a bit disappointing but it came into its own very well. And the ending was everything I had hoped for. I think French is very astute in her perception of people, without being judgemental while holding them to account. Same with the way her fiction functions at a fundamental level. And her similar respect of trauma is also fresh and propulsive in of itself. The experience of this was a joy, even when it kicks you in the gut.

More than once I thought that it felt like sad, Irish tune mainstays, such as Leave Her, Johnny, Leave her. Suppose it’s no coincidence, then, that a particular character is whistling it when the narrative wrap up is about to arrive.