Book #110: Faithful Place: A Novel

Title: Faithful Place: A Novel
Author: Tana French

I really enjoyed Tana French's two previous Dublin-based mysteries, In the Woods and The Likeness, so I was eager to read Faithful Place once I heard it was being released. In general, I liked the story-- Frank Mackey, the protagonist in this story, was a secondary character in The Likeness (which seems to be a trend for French's novels-- she used the same technique in her second novel), an undercover cop who discovers that he wasn't stood up by his girlfriend twenty years ago on the eve of their escape from the Dublin slum where they both grew up-- she had actually been killed.

One of the hallmark's of French's previous works was the complicated motivations of police officers whose work and personal lives intersect. She does a great job with the characterizations of the various people living on Faithful Place. Since I signed up with Audible several months ago, I've listened to lots of audiobooks, and sometimes the readers ruin the books, other times they're merely serviceable, but this time the reading, by Tim Gerard Reynolds, was fantastic. In fact he won an audiofile earphone award for the reading. He does a great job handling all the different characters (ranging from a young child to an old man) and captures all the intonations of Dublin's various social classes.

While the book was enjoyable to listen to, there were a few places where I felt that French's story fell short. Mackey is flawed and hard-bitten, but when he gets around his daughter, he turns into a perfect parent. Yes, he does break a weekend date with her to work on the case, but in general he's all Whole Foods and homework and bedtimes, which doesn't seem consistent with his character. I think he'd probably be a pretty crappy parent. The girl alternately seems older and younger than nine. I figured out who the killer was about 1/3 of the way into the book, and it seemed so obvious that I kept waiting for a twist, especially after the person confessed to one of the murders but refused to confess to the other. But I can easily overlook those small problems because I felt like French transported me to cold December nights on Faithful Place.