Faithful Place

Faithful Place
by Tana French
Viking, 2010. 400 pgs. Fiction

When Detective Frank Mackey gets a call from a home he hoped never to return to, he finds himself entangled in a 22-year old mystery. Many years ago, he and his girlfriend Rosie Daly had hoped to leave Dublin for London to start a new life away from their depressing and repressive families, but Rosie never showed. He figured she had blown him off and gone alone but now her suitcase has been found, shoved up the chimney in an abandoned house in Faithful Place. So what became of Rosie? Frank's efforts to find out will drive him back into hateful relationships, run him afoul of a colleague on the force, and bring ruin on the people he should have been able to love. Tana French's prose goes beyond gritty to sharp-edged gravel: the language is harsh, and the hateful lives of the poor with no prospects are painfully well-wrought. French's command of dialect is impressive and her characterizations are extraordinary, bad guys and good guys often indistinguishable. Beautifully well-written, Faithful Place is not for the faint of heart or psyche but it is a powerful, atmospheric mystery not easily forgotten.