By Ande Jacobson
Tana French is an American-Irish author who writes gripping mysteries. Her Dublin Murder Squad Mysteries series is taut and guaranteed to keep her readers up at night flipping pages to see what happens next. While Tana French aficionados sometimes recommend reading the series in order to fully appreciate the tempo of the squad, it’s not necessary. Although some characters are occasionally seen in multiple books, the books themselves don’t lose any of their appeal or tension if read standalone in any order.
The Trespasser is the sixth (and final) book in the series and was originally released in 2016. Detectives Antoinette Conway and Steve Moran are assigned the case of Aislinn Gwendolyn Murray’s murder just as they are coming off of a mind numbing night shift. Tired, hungry, and sleep deprived, they arrive on the scene to take a look at the victim who was found dead in her living room. The initial suspicions by the forensics team are that her demise was due to a lover’s quarrel gone horribly wrong. The prime suspect is her boyfriend, Rory Fallon. To add to Conway and Moran’s grief, the gaffer (their boss, Superintendent O’Kelly) assigns a senior detective, Don Breslin, to keep an eye on them. They don’t understand why this should be if the case really is as simple as it seems.
The further they dig into the backgrounds of their victim and witnesses, the more things start to unravel. Moran comes up with extravagant theories involving gangs and organized crime that seem just beyond plausibility, but something about the case just doesn’t sit right with Conway. She’s sure there’s more than a simple lover’s quarrel, but she’s not sold on Steve’s gangster theory. Both are concerned with being dogged by Breslin and his partner, Joe McCann, and both suffer some taunts from other members of their squad. It’s particularly odd that McCann feels compelled to intrude when he’s not assigned to the case.
Conway and Moran were the focus of the previous book in the series, The Secret Place, but even without reading that first, The Trespasser is an exciting and complete story in its own right.
Through the series, the squad is mostly a boy’s club, and the few female detectives stand out as outside of the norm. By the sixth book, there is only one female detective left on the squad, and the harassment that she receives is central to the story and to her experience. She’s surprised when she finds out where the harassment is really coming from and where she stands with her fellow detectives. As the story unfolds, we learn more about Conway’s and Moran’s backgrounds and how that affects their working relationship and their approach to the world at large.
Conway is always looking over her shoulder. She’s confident in her abilities, but she also thinks that she’s underappreciated. Moran is a little newer to the squad and is eager to please while trying to get a leg up after a difficult start to his police career. He and Conway are opposites in many ways. Conway is somewhat aloof, and on the surface at least not comfortable with people. She can play the game when she wants to, but most of the time she is instead forthright and downright blunt. In contrast, Moran is outwardly everybody’s friend. He’s overly cheerful, accommodating, and has a way with witnesses that puts them immediately at ease.
Breslin, is a piece of work. He’s got a good reputation, but he’s also a consummate game player. He’s been around the department forever, has a decent record and an outsized ego that displaces all of the air in the room, and for some inexplicable reason he wants this case closed as quickly as possible to the exclusion of a proper investigation when things start not adding up. The floaters assigned to the case fall all over themselves to please him. Moran does too, at least at a surface level. Conway doesn’t trust him, and by extension she doesn’t trust the gaffer for having assigned him to look over her shoulder. It’s her case, and she eventually convinces Moran that something is up outside of his gangster theories, but they have no idea the extent of the trouble they are uncovering as they get closer to the truth.
Tana French was born in the U.S., but spent her childhood living all over the world because of her father’s work. Through it all, the family summered in Ireland. After her whirlwind childhood, she settled in Ireland full time at the ripe old age of 17 to begin her college studies and just never left. Her books are rich with local vernacular and culture to give the reader an immersive experience. French has a background in archeology, acting, and writing which all contribute to her rich facility with storytelling.
From early on, French conferred with a retired detective friend to get the relationships, techniques, and subtleties of crime-solving work just right, and the result is stunning. Mysteries are character-driven because if the reader doesn’t care about the characters, they won’t pursue the mystery. The interactions between her characters are sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes comical, sometimes confrontational, all the while staying relatable. Her interrogation scenes are riveting as the information oozes out at just the right speed. It’s interesting how she breaks down the differences between how a detective might read someone compared to how a civilian without a detective’s training might do so. And of course there are numerous surprises along the way. Just when one thinks they have the crime figured out, there’s another twist that prevents the reader from solving the mystery too quickly. Once the murderer is clear there are still some unresolved aspects of the story that don’t settle until the very end. Although this is currently the last book in the series, and the story completely resolves, French leaves room for the squad to grow and evolve at a later date.
On a side note, French makes clear in this story how deeply one’s past affects everything they do, not just for Conway and Moran, but also how that manifests for minor characters in the story. Dysfunctional families can cause serious harm, and they can also make people more suspicious of everyone including those with good intentions.
References:
The Trespasser, by Tana French
https://booklyst.net/tana-french-books-in-order/
A Good Reed Review 