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quadrille 's review for:
Faithful Place
by Tana French
One of the many differences between Murder and Undercover is our attitudes to subtlety. Undercovers are even better at it than you think, and when we feel like a giggle we do love watching the Murder boys loving their entrances. These two swung around the corner in an unmarked silver BMW that didn’t need markings, braked hard, left the car at a dramatic angle, slammed their doors in sync—they had probably been practicing—and swaggered off towards Number 16 with the music from Hawaii Five-0 blasting through their heads in full surround sound.
I tore through this book in only a few days, as I always have done with Tana French's Dublin Murder Squad series (they are SO ADDICTIVE!!); except that I'm also trying to strictly ration myself and not run out of books too soon, because dear god, I love them too much. Every time I grow a bit disillusioned with prose, start forgetting what lovely writing looks like, I need an infusion of French to remind myself how dizzying and gorgeous writing can be.
Frank Mackey, especially, is a character so far up my alley it's ridiculous: a hardbitten cynical middle-aged divorcee detective with a soft spot a mile wide for his daughter. I read this quote in another book, but the writer Elizabeth Stone says that having a child is like deciding to have your heart go walking around outside your body; which is what I think of when it comes to Frank & Holly. He's all sharp edges and mouthy self-defense and emotional walls for days... except for when it comes to his daughter. He (and his family) are such goddamn vivid characters, and I love his wry, shittalking narration and everyone's tangledy melodic Irish brogues, which seeps through the text.
Tana French's sense of place & setting is, as always, so rich and evocative; Faithful Place and the Liberties in Dublin come to full life, this claustrophobic homey neighbourhood where everyone's all on top of each other, the tight-knit toxic bonds of family and society, gossip and tribalism and the way they clot together during times of trouble. I love Frank's cunning, calculating efforts to work his way back in and to be seen as 'one of us' rather than a copper, even after twenty years away, estranged from his family. It's fascinating watching him work; courtesy his work in Undercover plus growing up in the household he did, how much of his behaviour is a manipulative act spun a particular way to elicit the response he wants. He's a bit of a mess, but not as much as e.g. Rob Ryan of [b:In the Woods|237209|In the Woods (Dublin Murder Squad, #1)|Tana French|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1348442606s/237209.jpg|3088141], and still cruelly efficient; you can see how Frank was the tether trying to hold Cassie Maddox in place during [b:The Likeness|1914973|The Likeness (Dublin Murder Squad, #2)|Tana French|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1348934952s/1914973.jpg|6504351].
I've filed this book under both 'parent child feelings' and 'sibling feelings', because the Mackeys are such a feelsy punch to the gut: the siblings' effortless synchronicity, the way they grew up like a well-oiled machine handling their alcoholic father, the way they can all hurt each other best, the shadows of domestic & emotional abuse and alcoholism. The way you can see how it's forged Frank into the person he is today, the damage he's been carrying his whole life, before the events of this book are like watching a bomb going off. It's also refreshing because in the previous books, neither Rob nor Cassie had any real family to speak of (which is why they cottoned onto each other so much and became each others' makeshift family), so it's a nice change of pace to see the Mackeys in all their dysfunction and shared history and love and did I mention dysfunction?
The plot feels more believable and less implausible than the previous two books as well: Frank's overly-personal involvement skirts the line of all that's appropriate, but that still makes perfect sense considering his work ethic & his unique position to wrangle information out of this particular case. The stakes and emotional involvement are higher than ever before: there's a particular line where I went from 0 to 100 in terms of SUDDENLY BURSTING INTO TEARS while reading this book. I think this one might be my favourite of the series so far. I'm not even saying much about the plot, because I just dove in blind myself without knowing anything about the core murder or how it winds up on Frank's radar or how it ties to him; simply put, this series is always about the detectives' pasts coming back to haunt them, and them getting too personally involved in the case, which makes for a thrilling and also deeply emotional resolution. I saw the reveal of this one coming, but how it wraps up is quite literally nail-biting & painful & yet satisfying.
Just one more quote, for Frank's aching mix of disillusionment & hope re: his father:
[Jimmy to Frank:] "I'm asking you for nothing, you stupid little prick. I'm trying to tell you something important, if you'd only shut your gob long enough to listen. Or are you loving your own voice too much for that, are you?"
This may be the most pathetic thing I've ever admitted: deep down, a speck of me clung on to the chance that he might actually have something worthwhile to say. He was my da. When I was a kid, before I copped that he was a world-class fucknugget, he was the smartest man in the world; he knew everything about everything, he could beat up the Hulk with one hand while he bicep-curled grand pianos with the other, a grin from him lit up your whole day. And if ever I had needed a few precious pearls of fatherly wisdom, it was that night. I said, "I'm listening."