The Likeness - Tana French

I don’t think I’ve ever reacted to a crime novel before the way that I reacted to Tana French’s The Likeness (the second book in the author’s Dublin Murder Squad series). Almost from the beginning of the book, I found its basic premise to be implausible, if not impossible. There was simply no way that I could ever convince myself that an undercover cop could investigate a murder by moving into the victim’s home — especially when the home’s other four residents knew the victim so intimately — and pretending to be that dead woman. After two false starts during which I frustrated myself for a month, I finally put the book aside at page 140 for almost three months before finally picking it up again. And that’s when something funny happened. About a dozen pages later, I realized that French had finally quit trying to convince me that  such an investigation really could happen, and was ready to tell me the rest of the story. That shift in emphasis let me finally suspend my disbelief long enough to lose myself in The Likeness for the first time. Now what I find most unbelievable is how much I ended up loving this novel and its characters…all of them.  

Detective Cassie Maddox thought she was forever finished with murder investigations after what happened to her on her last one. But now, just six months after leaving the squad, Cassie has been called to the scene of a murder by her boyfriend Detective Sam O’Neill, who is still a member of the Murder Squad. When Cassie looks down at the dead woman, she immediately knows why Sam called her there: the victim could be Cassie’s identical twin. 

And that gives Frank Mackey, Cassies former undercover boss, an idea: What if they pretend that the victim somehow survived long enough to make it to the hospital? What if a few days later, the “dead girl” comes home to live with the people she lives with and claims that she doesn’t remember a thing about the incident that nearly killed her? What if the other four people living in the house fall for the charade long enough for Cassie and Frank to figure out which one of the four murdered the dead woman? And what if they don’t?

Even Cassie and Frank are a bit surprised when she seems to have successfully passed herself off as the dead Lexie. But they know that it will take only one little slip, one oddity out of character with the real Lexie, to expose Cassie to whomever killed Lexie. But instead of being overwhelmed by the precariousness of her situation, Cassie reacts in a way no one could have foreseen. She finds herself enjoying the lifestyle and the people she’s living with so much that she begins to protect some of their secrets from her boss. What could possibly go wrong now?

Bottom Line: The best thing about a Tana French novel is the characters she creates. French does not write short books (this one is 466 pages long), and that gives her the time needed to create very real, if often eccentric, characters. The reader is given all the time needed to learn not only the basics about each character, but all the little things about them that make them individuals: their petty rivalries and jealousies, their pasts, their fears, their hopes for the future, and where all the scars are hidden. I only reluctantly climbed into their world this time around, but I’m very happy that I made it. Don’t make the mistake I almost made by giving up on The Likeness too soon. Keep turning those pages. 

Tana French