The Secret Place - Softcover

French, Tana

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1444796518 ISBN 13: 9781444796513

Publisher: Hachette Books Ireland

The photo shows a boy who was murdered a year ago. The caption says, 'I KNOW WHO KILLED HIM'. Detective Stephen Moran hasn't seen Holly Mackey since she was a nine-year-old witness to the events of Faithful Place. Now she's sixteen and she's shown up outside his squad room, with a photograph and a story. Even in her exclusive boarding school, in the graceful golden world that Stephen has always longed for, bad things happen and people have secrets. The previous year, Christopher Harper, from the neighbouring boys' school, was found murdered on the grounds. And today, in the Secret Place - the school noticeboard where girls can pin up their secrets anonymously - Holly found the card. Solving this case could take Stephen onto the Murder squad. But to get that solved, he will have to work with Detective Antoinette Conway - tough, prickly, an outsider, everything Stephen doesn't want in a partner. And he will have to find a way into the strange, charged, mysterious world that Holly and her three closest friends inhabit and disentangle the truth from their knot of secrets, even as he starts to suspect that the truth might be something he doesn't want to hear.

Review:

An Amazon Best Book of the Month, September 2014: A fallow murder investigation is resuscitated when Holly Mackey (daughter of Frank Mackey, both last seen in Faithful Place) brings Detective Stephen Moran (Mackey’s protege in Faithful Place) a fresh clue she’s discovered at her posh girls’ school where the murder took place. Hoping this is his chance to trade Cold Cases for the Dublin Murder Squad and revive his own career, Moran finagles himself a partnership with prickly lead cop Antoinette Conway. Together the detectives try to find the truth inside the secrets, loyalties, and misdirection thrown their way by two rival groups of teenage schoolgirls. As in her previous books, just when you think you’ve solved the mystery another curious twist appears and French keeps you guessing right up until the very end. –Seira Wilson

About the Author:

Tana French grew up in Ireland, Italy, the United States and Malawi. She trained as an actor at Trinity College Dublin and has worked mainly in theatre. Her first novel, In the Woods, was published in 2007; it won the Edgar, Anthony, Macavity and Barry awards for Best First Novel and the IVCA Clarion Award for Best Fiction. In the Woods and her second novel, The Likeness, were both New York Times bestsellers. Broken Harbour won the BGE Crime Fiction Book of the Year award in 2012 and the LA Times prize for best Mystery/Thriller. She lives in Dublin with her husband and daughters. Tana French grew up in Ireland, Italy, the United States and Malawi. She is the author of In the Woods (winner of the Edgar, Anthony, Macavity and Barry awards for Best First Novel), The Likeness, Faithful Place and Broken Harbour (winner of the LA Times prize for Best Mystery/Thriller). She lives in Dublin with her husband and two children. She keeps a website at www.tanafrench.com