The Secret Place by Tana French was far better than I’d expected. I picked it up because it gets great reviews and because I was interested in moving away from the more romantic fare that I had been reading and back into a mystery. I didn’t realize it until after I’d finished the book, but this is the fifth in the Dublin Murder squad series,
and while it stands on it’s own, I have the feeling that there were some references to the previous novels that I didn’t catch.
A year after popular Chris Harper was murdered in a field between the grounds of his all-boys boarding school and the neighbouring girls’ boarding school, Holley Mackey comes into the police station with a potential breakthrough. She refuses to speak with anyone but Detective Stephen Moran, a cold case detective who she met years prior when she was a witness in another crime. She brings him a note that she found on the girls’ school confession board, a photo of Harper with the words “I know who killed him” scrawled across it. It’s not a solid lead, but he sees his chance when it is in front of him. Moran, desperate to get off of cold cases and onto the murder squad, partners with Detective Antoinette Conway, a woman with a reputation for being difficult and who was assigned to the case originally. Together, they immerse themselves into the vicious and manipulative world of teenage girls, attempting to see what was missed the year prior.
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