Faithful Place by Tana French
9.0
Faithful Place is the third installment in Tana French's Dublin Murder Squad series. The mystery features the detective Frank Mackey, also a character in French's 2008 mystery The Likeness, who returns to his hometown to investigate the murder of his childhood sweatheart, 20 years after he last saw her.
Mystery / Viking Adult / July 13, 2000
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Critic's Reviews
Reviewer: Maureen Corrigan
""Faithful Place" is the third installment in her ongoing saga about the Dublin Murder Squad, and it's breathtaking -- an elaborately twisted ballad of class resentments, family burdens, regret and passion."
Reviewer: Yvonne Zipp
"With her third novel, French trades the dreamy, locked-house puzzle of “The Likeness” for a grinding banality that feels completely real....She might change narrators with every novel, but her interest in emotional isolation continues to make her one of the most resonant writers in any genre."
Reviewer: Laura Miller
"“Faithful Place” is wrenching to a degree that detective fiction rarely achieves...French does something fresh with every novel, each one as powerful as the last but in a very different manner. Perhaps she has superpowers of her own? Whatever the source of her gift, it’s only growing more miraculous with every book."
Reviewer: Janet Maslin
"The first thing that Ms. French does so well in “Faithful Place” is to inhabit fully a scrappy, shrewd, privately heartbroken middle-aged man. The second is to capture the Mackey family’s long-brewing resentments in a way that’s utterly realistic on many levels."
Reviewer: Alison Flood
"It's not the crime, or even the solving of it, that makes this one of the best thrillers so far this year – there's no serial killer stalking Dublin's streets, no big "reveal". It's French's skills as a storyteller that make Faithful Place stand out, along with her best creation yet, the enjoyably flawed Frank."
Reviewer: Regina Marler
"Along with her riveting depiction of place, French has a gift for dialogue so genuine that you can hear her characters breathe....This sensibility works beautifully in "Faithful Place," in which accidents of phrasing carry more investigative weight than an autopsy. Take this book slowly and savor the details. Like a slow pour of Guinness, it's worth the wait."
Reviewer: Emily Withrow
"In the end, Faithful Place is a page-turner, but nothing more than a neatly wrapped mystery in an intriguing setting, more tableau than tour de force. It would be great, if only French hadn’t already proved she’s capable of more."