The Likeness -Tana French
(Hodder, $26.99)
I have a friend in New York who, for the past year or so, has proved immensely reliable at recommending books I would otherwise probably not pick up, which takes me off my usual path.
It was she who suggested I read City of Thieves by David Benioff, for example, which was one of my favourites of 2009, and I have just finished another of her recent popular choices – The Likeness, by Tana French.
Dublin-based Tana is a former actress who says that inhabiting a character on stage and on paper is actually very similar. She is certainly well under the skin of Detective Cassie Maddox, the narrator of this gripping thriller.
It is six months after the conclusion of a particularly nasty case and Cassie has left the life of an undercover cop behind her and is doing office time – quite happily – in the domestic violence squad. At first she can’t work out why, in that case, she is being called to another grisly murder scene, but when she gets there, it all becomes horribly clear. The dead girl is not only Cassie’s double, but is also carrying the ID of her former undercover persona, Lexi Madison.
Despite her reluctance to be drawn back into the tangled world of fictional lives and secret identities, Cassie can’t resist the chance to keep Lexi Madison alive and find out who she really was and who wanted her dead. In doing so, she is drawn into the arms of the very strange but compellingly alluring “family” of which Lexi had become a part. This bunch of brainy nerds live in a stately Irish home and spend their time drinking, spouting poetry, smoking fags and swearing loyalty to each other, which certainly had its appeal for Lexi, and soon starts getting its tentacles around Cassie too.
I couldn’t put this book down. Turns out it’s a sequel of sorts to a bestseller called In the Woods – about the particularly nasty case that is referred to at the beginning. You don’t need to have read it – but I’m sure as heck going to.
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