The Likeness

Everyone should have a book lover/recommender friend. I bet you think I’m going to talk about Allie here, but I’m not (sorry, Allie). I’m thinking about my best friend at work, who’s a grandmother and she belongs to all these book clubs and one time she took me to her favorite independent bookstore and everyone knew her by name. We spend a lot of time sitting in her office talking about books, which is absolutely fantastic. Our tastes are similar and she owns everything and is always offering to let me borrow books. It’s a dream come true.

Last year, she told me about an Irish murder mystery writer named Tana French. I was like, Irish murder mystery? Really? But it turns out my skepticism was completely unfounded. I’m sorry I ever doubted you, Tana French. I read the first book in the Dublin Murder Squad series, In The Woods, in December. Loved it, loved it, loved it, and then suddenly I got Gone Girled. This is a new phrase I’m trying to make happen. It’s for when the ending of a book frustrates you so much that you need to scream at it. I’m a happy ending fan myself, so I’m pretty prone to feeling this way.

Once I sorted out my feelings about it, though, I realized that I liked that the loose ends weren’t all neatly tied up in a pretty little bow. I think the fact that some mysteries are never solved, and that sometimes solving them doesn’t help you feel any better, probably mirrors what a murder detective actually goes through. After I came to this realization that sometimes I’m okay with a non-happy ending, I decided to give the second book, The Likeness, a shot. And wow, I’m glad I did.

In The Woods is told from the point of view of Detective Rob Ryan as he works a case with his partner, Cassie Maddox. The Likeness picks up soon after In The Woods left off, and this time is told from Cassie’s perspective. Before she was a murder detective, she worked undercover as a girl named Lexie Madison. Now, Cassie’s moved on from the Murder Squad, but she gets called to a crime scene outside of Dublin. When she shows up, she quickly realizes why they wanted her there – the body looks just like Cassie, and her ID says Lexie Madison.

Here’s where the plot gets crazy. Are you ready? They decide that the best thing to do to solve this murder is to say this girl’s been seriously injured but she’ll probably pull through, and then send Cassie into her life pretending to be her, to figure out who the murderer is from the inside. So Cassie as Lexie shows up with a microphone pack under the bandages where her stab wound should be and pretends to be Lexie. I know this sounds absolutely ridiculous and unbelievable, but it’s actually handled really well – Cassie and the other detectives recognize that this is crazy and might not work, and they have a contingency plan in place.

Lexie was doing a PhD in English at Trinity College, and she lived in huge, old Whitethorn House on the outskirts of a small village. Sharing the house are four other PhD students: Daniel, Abby, Justin, and Rafe. The five of them are almost bizarrely close; they have no other friends and very little contact with the outside world, other than when they go to school to work in the library. They also seem to have travelled straight out of another century; they don’t have any TV or computers, and they spend their evenings reading by the fireplace and playing cards.

Cassie is completely enamored with the four of them, their friendship, and their lifestyle, and so am I. For long periods of time while reading, I forgot that there was a murder to be solved. This was helped by the fact that Cassie seemed to forget, too; she uses the house and Lexie’s life as an escape from her own, and her supervisors get increasingly more worried about her. Her ability to insert herself into Lexie’s life without tipping off her closest friends is amazing, but she’s not able to do this without being pulled into life at Whitethorn House.

This is not an edge-of-your-seat murder mystery. It’s a story about people and friendship, with a murder guiding the plot. At over 450 pages, The Likeness has many scenes that are superfluous to solving the murder, but they’re valuable and well-written. I cannot recommend this book enough, especially for fans of How to Get Away with Murder and The Secret History, or anyone who likes their novels to come with a healthy dose of over-the-top escapism, while still feeling real.

You don’t have to read the series in order, because there’s no huge plot connecting the books to each other, even though the characters are connected. The Likeness does mention the central case of In The Woods several times, but it doesn’t spoil it. It will make you curious, though, and you’ll probably end up reading In The Woods anyway, so I recommend starting with it.

Grade: A

The Likeness by Tana French