Deborama’s Books — Some More Books I’ve Read Lately — Part 1

Everything by Tana French. (4.5 stars average)

It’s been a while since I have been moved to read the entire oeuvre of a writer. With only eight books so far to her name, and such a readable style, full of great characters in a great setting, Tana French is an author for whom that’s relatively easy to do.

Apart from reading the first book first, almost by accident, I did not read these order, as shown in the picture. The longest gap was between the first one and the second one (still in order at that point) of more than a year. And in that gap, I saw a “mini-series” type TV dramatization of the first two, squished together as if one story.

There is an unusual overlapping structure to the first four books of the Dublin Murder Squad series, where you are subtly encouraged to sympathize with a main (or point of view) character and be suspicious of a secondary character, only to find that in the next book, the secondary character has become the main one. Here are very brief synopses of the six Dublin Murder Squad books so you can see how they interconnect:

In the Woods — Detectives Rob Ryan and Cassie Maddox, best friends outside of work, catch a case of a missing child in what, unbeknownst to all except Rob, is Rob’s childhood village, where he was the victim of a similar crime. Rob is trying to solve the crime of his childhood along with the current one, all while concealing his identity from the village and the Garda. The Likeness — Cassie made her way to Murder via Undercover, where she had one case — investigating drug trafficking using a false identity with the name Lexie Madison. Now she is pulled off Murder by former boss Frank Mackey, because the body of her doppleganger, who was apparently called Lexie Madison, has been discovered, and Frank wants her to impersonate her again! And find out who she was! While living in a household that probably contains her killer! I know, wild.

Faithful Place — Frank Mackey left Faithful Place, a working-class cul de sac in central Dublin, right out of school, to join the Garda, after apparently being jilted by his great love, Rosie. Now a body that might be Rosie has been found in the derelict house where Frank went to meet Rosie to run off to England, the night she never showed. Frank’s colleague Scorcher Kennedy is handling the case, and Frank just can’t stay away, even though he has been avoiding his highly dysfunctional family (who still live a few houses away ) ever since leaving. Frank recruits an ambitious “floater” temporarily under Kennedy, Stephen Moran, to help him while concealing his own involvement. Broken Harbour — Scorcher Kennedy has very mixed feelings about Broken Harbour, once a seaside village, now a so-called “ghost estate” called Brianstown. It was a place where he was happy for a change, but all this was destroyed when his Mum took her life there at the end of a family holiday. Now he is in charge of investigating the murder of an entire family in one of the few occupied houses.

The Secret Place — Stephen Moran is still a floater due to his subterfuge on the Faithful Place case, but on that case, he made a connection with Frank’s daughter, Holly. Now Holly is 16, and a student boarding at upscale girl’s school St. Kilda. The previous year, the body of a popular boy from St. Kilda’s brother school was found on the grounds. Holly brings Stephen a vital piece of evidence because she trusts him more than the assigned Murder Squad detective, Antoinette Conway. Could this be Moran’s way out of the floater pool and into the Murder Squad? And could Moran and Conway turn out to be that magical thing all detectives want, perfect partners for each other? The Trespasser — Breaking the tradition, this one features the same team that got together in the previous novel — Stephen Moran and Antoinette Conway, now official Murder Squad partners. A pretty young woman is found dead in her immaculate apartment in gentrified Stoneybatter, with a fancy dinner ready to serve. Obvious suspicion falls on the date, a young man very much in love with her, who swears she never answered the door so he went and “drowned his sorrows.” Conway, the only woman on the Murder Squad, is always subject to horrifying levels of harassment, so at first the partners think the obstruction they’re facing in not charging the boyfriend right away is just more of that. But could it be someone else is being protected by the “old boys network?”

French’s latest two novels are organized around a crime, but are more mystery-adjacent stories about “civilians” and not police procedurals like the Dublin Murder Squad series. The Witch Elm — This concerns an unusual family and its prize possession, a lovely and large old house with a beautiful garden in the Dublin inner city but tucked away in a hidden part. The house, and the ancient elm tree in its garden are characters, in a way. (I just saw that it’s The Wych Elm in the UK and Ireland. I hate when they do that.) The Searcher — Features an American protagonist, an ex-Chicago cop, who has moved to a rural Irish village to get away and ponder his life. A teenage kid is hanging around the cottage he bought, and when Cal accosts the kid, it starts a relationship, where Trey (the teenager) tells Cal about a missing older brother and asks for his help to find him. I won’t say any more about this here. I am somewhat inspired to write a whole article about transformative justice, community safety vs. vigilantism, and the moral ambiguity of cop stories.

Norwegian by Night and American by Day, by Derek B. Miller (4.75 stars average)

This is an interesting pair of books. It’s similar to what Tana French did with the Dublin Murder Squad series, except not within one “system” so you couldn’t really name the “series” it creates. Norwegian by Night takes place in Norway and is told from the point of view of an elderly American man. American by Day takes place in America and is told from the point of view of a young Norwegian woman — a police detective — who was also a major character in the first book. The two books share no other major characters, and there is no connection between the two crimes to be solved. But in both cases, the protagonist has to navigate systems and match wills and wits with bad, scary enemies in an unfamiliar country.

Also, personally speaking, a similar thing happened here to what happened with other authors I recently reviewed (Jason Goodwin and Marcie Rendon.) In this case, Norwegian by Night was in the “condo library*,” donated by an unknown neighbor. I read it, loved it, wanted to read the other book. So I bought that one from ABE Books online and put both books together back in the condo library when I was done. And I am recommending them to others. * A sort of larger version of a little free library, in a common area of the 55+ condominium where I live.

Two Days Gone, by Randall Silvis (4 stars)

I found this book in the condo library, and put it back there when I was done. I will try to read the others as library checkouts.

Two Days Gone, from 2017 by Randall Silvis, is the first in a series now numbering six titles, of mysteries featuring a complex character named Ryan DeMarco. In this novel, he is a sergeant in the Pennsylvania state police. He’s in a bad state, and ripe for change, which seems to start unfolding right at the end of this sad, indeed heartrending, multiple murder investigation. The setting for the story is interesting to me — western Pennsylvania, the rural and mountainous areas around Pittsburgh — because it’s where I was born, but did not grow up, nor ever live in again past the age of three. Also I was born on the campus of a small liberal arts college called Washington and Jefferson, because my dad was an undergraduate (GI Bill student, so in his mid-20s.) And this story involves a professor of creative writing at a similar sort of college.

The basic outline of the story is that the professor, Thomas Huston, seems to have a perfect life (and indeed seems to feel blessed and content) but then one morning his entire family — beloved wife and three children, one a baby — are found to have been stabbed to death in their beds, and a kitchen knife and the professor are missing. DeMarco had been a friend of Huston’s and though his job requires him to assume the obvious — that Huston went mad or something and did this terrible deed — he is having trouble seeing this kind, generous, thoughtful man, a renowned writer as well as a teacher, doing such a thing.

The viewpoint switches back and forth between DeMarco and Huston, each on his own quest, with the latter needing to conceal himself from the former, and gradually things are revealed. Including DeMarco’s own secret sorrow, the thing that has frozen his life into a still tableau of pain and despair.