Unfortunately, I think I might be changing my mind about Tana French. I loved The Secret Place, but nothing since then has held up. I know my literary tastes tend to be a little on the pedestrian side, but I would like a few more loose ends tied up, and a little bit more of a happy ending.
Detective Kennedy and his newbie partner Detective Curran (I listened to the audio book, sorry if I’m misspelling things) are assigned a case, the brutal slaying of an entire family. The crime took place in a spooky, half-completed subdivision that was being built where Kennedy’s family used to vacation and where his own family tragedy took place.
I was startled when they’d caught the killer by disc 10 (out of 17), and sure enough, nothing was as it seemed. I do love French’s writing, and boy howdy can she set up a mystery, but the unrelenting grimness got to me after a while. Kennedy has family troubles and job troubles in addition to the stress of this high-profile case. His new partner is the one bright spot in the book, and well, I was not too happy with the resolution of his story.
So we have a grim murder (not that there are happy murders, but this one’s awfully icky), lots of unreliable suspects, a grim resolution to the case, a grim prognosis for Kennedy and Curran at the end, and then one giant plot point that just gets totally dropped. I actually checked the box to make sure my library hadn’t lost a final disc. And I get why she did it (I can’t tell you without getting super spoilery), and it made sense within the story, but dammit, I wanted an answer.
For me, I think the excellent writing doesn’t outweigh the overwhelming bleakness of a French book. This might be my last one for a while.
You should give the latest one a try. It’s much less bleak.
All right, but only ’cause it’s you suggesting it!
Oh no, if you hate it I will feel so bad!
I like her writing too much to hate it, I’m sure! I might just need a break before I dive in.
So what’s your take on this one: is the thing in the attic real or no?
Ugh, it’s so hard with Tana French, because you can always take it either way. And she definitely wants you to treat it like metaphor, but you can do that whether the thing is real or not. With this one, I tend to think it wasn’t real, that it was a manifestation of what was going on in his life. To be honest, I kind of like having it up in the air, and not knowing for sure. I like being able to have it both ways.