A Look at Tana French’s Dublin Murder Squad Series
Image via Viking Penguin
The Likeness
Synopsis: The Likeness features Cassie Maddox, partner to Rob from In the Woods. This time the story is all about her and it’s a doozy. Cassie is called in to work on a case where the body of a girl named Lexie Madison is found in a small cottage. The thing is, the girl looks just like Cassie. Scarier still, “Alexandra Madison” is the name Cassie used when she was undercover. Since the body was found alone, Cassie’s boss Frank Mackey wants her to go undercover and pretend that Lexie never died at all, in order to draw the real killer out. Cassie finds herself inhabiting Lexie’s strange world, the house where she lived with her four best friends in a house isolated from the rest of the world. As Cassie gets drawn deeper into Lexie’s life it becomes harder and harder for her to separate the case from her new, domestic life.
Why to read it: Cassie is an interesting character as seen through Rob’s eyes, but in The Likeness she is given her own chance to shine. The events in this novel take place six months after the first, letting us see how Cassie is dealing with the repercussions of the previous case while also delving into some of her own past as well.
French is a masterful writer in the way she crafts her stories because it is impossible to know who to trust. She draws us into the lives of Lexi’s friends, Daniel, Rafe, Justin, and Abby, in a way that seems almost magical. They remind us of memories of our own youthful friendships and that intense feeling of loyalty that comes with belonging to a group that feels invincible against the rest of the world. Cassie has to deal with this desire to be accepted and even loved by these people, all while trying to figure out if one of them is a murderer. The more you read, the more tangled in these students’ lives and deceptions you become.
That is the main thing about French’s books; while there’s always an actual murderer, a person who committed the crime, not everyone is innocent. She focuses on the darkness we all have inside ourselves, the things lurking just under the surface and the secrets we keep from even those we are supposed to trust the most.