Tana French - The Trespasser

Rating: 5/5

Review:
More brilliance from Tana French

This is yet another excellent novel from Tana French.  She is one of the very best of contemporary crime writers and this is well up to standard.

The book is set, as always, in the Dublin Murder Squad.  This one is told in the first person by relatively new detective Antoinette Conway, in a brilliant narrative voice.  Conway is driven, determined and very, very angry with the contemptuous attitude to her which she sees in her colleagues.  She has a wonderfully cynical and angry attitude much of the time, which is superbly conveyed in an utterly convincing way.  The plot involves an apparently routine "domestic" which begins to reveal deeper forces.  It moves slowly but compellingly as Conway goes down blind alleys and begins to suspect corruption and cover-up in her own squad.

Tana French does it all brilliantly.  As ever, a large part of the appeal of the book is the psychology of her protagonist and other characters, and we get what turns out to be a fine portrait of the way in which the stories we tell ourselves affect the way we see the world and ultimately how we conduct our relationships and our lives.  This sounds very ponderous and worthy, but it's not at all.  It's an engrossing, readable book which makes its points with subtlety and as part of the story.  Don't expect lots of violent action or a fast-paced plot, but there's a fine, developing sense of menace and a couple of very unexpected developments.  I found it very gripping, and there are some especially brilliant interview scenes.

In short, this is an excellent novel of character as well as being a terrific crime novel.  I enjoyed it enormously and I can recommend it very warmly.