There is a deep, almost primal desire that we all share to belong to something larger than ourselves. Perhaps it is inherent, harking back to our earliest days when survival depended upon being part of a group. On some level, it lasts our entire life, this desire to belong, to be a member of a partnership, a family, a team, a political party or a church.
It seems that it is never as strong as it is when we are in our teens. Unsure of our own identity, we seek it in groups of others, of friends with whom we can hide our insecurity, our self-doubt and share our hopes and secret dreams. Within a close group of friends we feel secure and protected, willing to accept the conformity that binds and identifies us. Our clique protects us, and our secrets, when we need that protection the most. At least, it should.
Tana French explores that sense of belonging in adults and in teens, in her latest novel, The Secret Place.
The Secret Place
by Tana French
Published by Viking Adult
September 2nd 2014
464 pages
This story is told in two different voices, and two different times. One story line takes place on a single day, as the investigation into an unsolved murder is re-opened and two police officers visit the private girls' school where it took place.
That story is told in alternate chapters with the other story line which is set a year and a half earlier, six months before the murder occurred. It focuses on the students of the girls' school and the neighboring school for boys.
We last met Stephen Moran in Faithful Place, where he was lured into an alliance with Frank Mackey, the ethically ambiguous detective, who was an outsider during the investigation into the disappearance of his long-lost first love. Since working as a floater on that investigation, Moran has been promoted to Vice and then to the Cold Case Squad where he has spent the last two years, ever ready to jump on the first opportunity that might take him to the Murder Squad.
Murder is the thoroughbred stable. Murder is a shine and a dazzle, a smooth ripple like honed muscle, take your breath away. Murder is a brand on your arm, like an elite army unit’s, like a gladiator’s, saying for all your life: One of us. The finest.
I want Murder.
An opportunity was presented by Holly Mackey, Frank's daughter, who is now sixteen, and a boarder at the posh private girls' school, St Kilda's. Holly shows up at Moran's office with a picture of Chris Harper, the young boy who had been found with his skull bashed in at St Kilda's a year earlier. Pasted on the picture were the words, cut from a printed book, as in a ransom note, "I know who killed him." Holly found the photo on the school's bulletin board, known as the Secret Place, where students can anonymously pin up secrets and gossip.
Moran tracks down the lead detective who worked the case the year before, Detective Antoinette Conway, of Dublin's Murder Squad.
A woman working Murder shouldn’t rate scandal, shouldn’t even rate a mention. But a lot of the old boys are old school; a lot of the young ones, too. Equality is paper-deep, peel it away with a fingernail.
Her manner, as abrasive as a file that could have been used to sharpen that fingernail, has alienated her colleagues on the squad. She invites Stephen Moran to accompany her out to the school to re-open the case.
We meet Chris Harper through the eyes of the girls at St. Kilda's, as their groups casually encounter each other at a local mall. Holly is now a weekly boarder, and like all other boarders at her level, shares her the four-bed room with three other girls, all of whom are her friends. The nemesis that Holly and her friends, Julia, Selena and Becca share, is another group of four roommates led by Joanne Heffernan. Joanne and her friends spend most of their time obsessing over magazine articles that teach them the basics of exfoliation and other skin care issues. Known by Holly's friends as the Daleks, they appear to wear their sense of entitlement as if it were a fashion accessory. An expensive one at that.
Meanwhile, Conway and Moran work their way through the list of people who could possibly have posted the photo on the bulletin board and come down to the eight girls. Who posted it and what did she know? Were any of the girls dating Chris? And is his ghost really coming back for her?
As usual, French puts her words in a lovely order:
Blue, a blue that changed your eyes like you’d never seen blue before. Hyacinths: thousands of them, tumbling down a soft slope under trees, like they were being poured out of some great basket with no bottom. The smell could have set you seeing things.
In the past I have enjoyed listening to each of French's books. Because her series focuses on the Dublin Murder Squad, and not a single investigator, each novel has a different voice. Each audiobook has a different narrator, but all of them were a joy to listen to. Except this one.
Two narrators are used, one for the investigators' chapters and one for the girls. Stephen Hogan, who narrated Broken Harbor, did another great job with his portion of this book which made the voice of the other narrator, Lara Hutchinson, all the more painful. Her own breathy voice that went up a couple of octaves when reading dialogue was just awful. There was no distinction between the characters, making the conversations difficult to follow and making it hard to get an idea of who the girls were as individuals. At chapter four I began reading the chapters that she narrated, only listening to those by Stephen Hogan.
The other thing that bothered me about this entry in the series, is that French introduces a touch of the supernatural for no apparent reason. It did not happen often, but it had nothing to do with the mystery, nor did it reveal anything about the characters that the reader needed to know. It felt like her agent or her publisher asked her to jazz it up, and since vampires were already taken, she decided to go for telekinesis instead. No. Don't do that. In Tana French's own words, it made my "brain short out with stupid."
This is not her strongest novel, the murderer was fairly easy to pick out, and the character development that I so enjoyed in her earlier work seemed muted here. I also had a problem with the fact that all of the detecting was done by Moran, with the lead detective, Conway, just glowering in the background. Yes, she may have been testing him, but still, a little detecting from the lead detective would not have gone astray.
All that said, she still writes some lovely prose.
Holly finishes her ice cream and hangs backwards by the swing chains, just keeping the ends of her hair from brushing the dirt, watching the others upside down and sideways. Julia has lain back on the roundabout and is turning it slowly with her feet; the roundabout squeaks, a lazy regular sound, soothing. Next to her Selena sprawls on her stomach , stirring idly through her shopping bag, letting Jules do the work. Becca is threaded through the climbing frame, dabbing at her ice cream with the tip of her tongue, seeing how long she can make it last. Traffic noises and guys’ shouts seep over the hedge, sweetened by sun and distance.
Reading it is the best way to enjoy it.
Exciting news for Readers & Book Lovers: Chrislove is joining us as the new Editor for LGBT Literature. He will be hosting the series on the last Sunday of the month at 7:30 PM ET. I hope you will all join me in welcoming him to the Group and in checking out his inaugural diary on Sunday, September 28, 2014!
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