The Likeness: A Novel [Paperback]

Tana French (Author)

Book Description

Release date: May 26, 2009

The haunting follow up to the Edgar Award-winning debut In the Woods

Tana French astonished critics and readers alike with her mesmerizing debut novel, In the Woods. Now both French and Detective Cassie Maddox return to unravel a case even more sinister and enigmatic than the first. Six months after the events of In the Woods, an urgent telephone call beckons Cassie to a grisly crime scene. The victim looks exactly like Cassie and carries ID identifying herself as Alexandra Madison, an alias Cassie once used. Suddenly, Cassie must discover not only who killed this girl, but, more importantly, who is this girl? A disturbing tale of shifting identities, The Likeness firmly establishes Tana French as an important voice in suspense fiction. And look for French's new mystery, Broken Harbor, for more of the Dublin Murder Squad.


The "expertly rendered, gripping new novel" (Janet Maslin, The New York Times)-from the bestselling author of In the Woods and The Likeness.

Tana French's In the Woods and The Likeness captivated readers by introducing them to her unique, character-driven style and her new mystery, Broken Harbor, is eagerly anticipated. Her singular skill at creating richly drawn, complex worlds makes her novels not mere whodunits but brilliant and satisfying novels about memory, identity, loss, and what defines us as humans. With Faithful Place, the highly praised third novel about the Dublin Murder squad, French takes readers into the mind of Frank Mackey, the hotheaded mastermind of The Likeness, as he wrestles with his own past and the family, the lover, and the neighborhood he thought he'd left behind for good.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

*Starred Review* French’s debut novel, In the Woods (2007), introduced Dublin Murder Squad detective Cassie Maddox and earned unanimous critical praise. Cassie is back, and French has written another winner. The body of a young woman is found in the ruins of a old stone cottage in a dying village outside of Dublin, and the dead woman and Cassie are virtual twins. Lacking suspects or leads, the victim is reported by the police to be injured but alive, leaving Cassie to step into the dead woman’s life as a Trinity College graduate student and the housemate of four other students. Despite the tensions of being undercover, Cassie quickly learns to love her quirky, insular housemates and her new life in a once-grand house, even as the Murder Squad investigation yields little. Someone stabbed her doppelganger to death, and Cassie must find the killer. The Likeness has everything: memorable characters, crisp dialogue, shrewd psychological insight, mounting tension, a palpable sense of place, and wonderfully evocative, painterly prose. In the Woods was an Edgar Award finalist; this one just might go one step further. --Thomas Gaughan --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

" [Tana French] aces her second novel. The Likeness [is a] nearly pitch- perfect follow-up to her 2007 debut thriller, In the Woods."
-Entertainment Weekly

" The Likeness [is] a book even better than the first, which was very good indeed. . . . The suspense is gut-grinding . . . A wonderful book."
-New York Daily News

" For The Likeness, [French] has brought back detective Cassie Maddox and fashioned a plot that harks back to both Donna Tartt and Wilkie Collins."
-The Washington Post

" [French's] already signature blend of psychological insight, beautiful writing and wry humor is on display once more in The Likeness."
-The Baltimore Sun

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 466 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Books; Reprint edition (May 26, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0143115626
• ISBN-13: 978-0143115625
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (351 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #14,897 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Tana French grew up in Ireland, the US, Italy and Malawi. She trained as an actress at Trinity College Dublin and has worked in theatre, film and voiceover. She is the author of In the Woods (2007), The Likeness (2008) and Faithful Place (2010). Her books have won Edgar, Anthony, Macavity, Barry and ICVA Clarion awards and have been finalists for LA Times and Strand Magazine awards. She lives in Dublin with her husband and daughter.

Amazon Author Rankbeta 

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#33 in Books > Mystery, Thriller & Suspense > Police Procedurals

#91 in Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Action & Adventure

#98 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Action & Adventure

#33 in Books > Mystery, Thriller & Suspense > Police Procedurals

#91 in Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Action & Adventure

#98 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Action & Adventure

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

256 of 272 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The hawthorn as extended metaphor July 22, 2008

By switterbug TOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

There will be no spoilers in this review.

As in her first novel, In the Woods, Tana French has created another sensuous, lyrical, haunting, suspenseful story. Although it is considered a mystery, it is much much more than that. It is a story of identity in all its literal and metaphorical forms. It is a social commentary (but never sententious) and it is also about fear and flight and love.

Cassie Maddox and Sam O'Neill are detectives from In the Woods. Although Operation Vestal (from In the Woods) is mentioned several times, these books can be read in any sequence without ruining it for the reader. The setting is again Dublin, Ireland.

Cassie is the star attraction of this story as she goes undercover to live with four liberal arts doctoral candidates whose housemate, Lexie Madison, is found dead from a stabbing in an abandoned cottage. Lexie Madison looks exactly like Cassie, and the name is her last undercover alias, which adds to the mystery. The housemates will be told that she survived the stabbing.

It isn't necessary to give too many plot details. What is more important is the response from reading. This is a generous, gorgeous, thoughtful, poetic story. The tone is almost elegiac at times, especially during her descriptive paragraphs, and the author's use of the extended metaphor is prolific and often profound. At the end of the novel, I looked up hawthorn (the tree, flower, bush) on Wikipedia and had a chill run up and down my spine. Her descriptions, turns of phrase, elegant passages and graceful unfolding keep me fastened and fascinated. What I love about Tana French is that her novels are both character-driven AND plot-driven. She does not sacrifice one for the other. With most mysteries, I only read them once. But The Likeness can be read again just for the aesthetics. Also, there is no deus ex machina here. The story is excellently paced with a well-timed delivery of its climax.

Tana French is no lightweight, but she makes the story accessible to anyone who enjoys reading. She has that gift to appeal to a variety of readers-- even readers who look for largely escape mysteries. But this is not escape reading; it is the kind of reading that makes you ponder. It is philosophical and it echoes. It has shadows, swirls, hollows, heart,humanity, tension, suspense, whispers, hawthorn, hawthorn, hawthorn...

I look forward to the third book that Tana French is working on, with Frank Mackey (from The Likeness) as the main protagonist.

134 of 149 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Gorgeous writing, flimsy plot December 2, 2008

By e. verrillo

Format:Hardcover

Likeness is one of those off-kilter books that you love to read because the prose is stunning, but which fails completely as a novel. In order for French's plot to work you have to believe: 1)that an undercover cop could pass herself off as another person to a group of people who knew her "double" intimately, 2)that a person can go from being a hat designer to a PhD student in one year (transcripts? application process? recommendations?),3) that grad school students act like 15-year-olds (well, OK maybe that's not so far off the mark),4) that a trained undercover cop would keep important evidence (the diary) from her superiors, etc. etc. etc. I simply did not buy any of it. There were problems with the writing as well. I found the trendy post-modern "quotes" (Star Trek, Alice's Restaurant) disruptive. And those endless ambiguous, interrupted conversations hinting at dark secrets got old after a while. I wanted some resolution. Even the relationships between the characters were unconvincing. Was Cassie actually supposed to be in love with Sam? Why did Cassie want to be Lexi? Why did the villagers care so deeply about a woman who had died almost a hundred years earlier? In short, the premise was implausible, the book was over-written, and the psychology shaky.
French is a fabulous writer. I'm hoping that her third novel will be a charm.

103 of 115 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Feckin' genius August 19, 2008

By Adam Shinbrot

Format:Hardcover

It's feckin' genius, that's what it is. I couldn't write a single sentence as well as Tana French if I started now and lived to be a thousand. And she wrote a whole book, two books, of them. Flawlessly. Word after word, sentence after sentence, paragraph after paragraph, until the book is as perfect as it could be. It boggles the mind, it really does.

The first time I picked up Raymond Chandler, I knew I was in the hands of something profound and mysterious. I haven't had that feeling again for many years, till In The Woods, and even more powerfully, The Likeness.

Here's an Australian sheep rancher, talking about his daughter:

"But when she was nine, her mother had hemmorhaged, ...and bled out before a doctor could get there. 'Gracie was too young to hear that,' he said. '...I knew as soon as I told her. The look in her eyes: she was too young to hear it. It cracked her straight across.'"

"It cracked her straight across". That's the power of metaphor in the hands of a master. It conveys in a way that touches the heart what exactly happened, in the same way that Shakespeare would use metaphor and words.

It's a privilege to read Tana French, it really is. I feel only pity for the person who wrote of the unbelievable plot, I do. This book isn't about a plot, just as Chandler wasn't about plot, just as we don't read Shakespeare for the plot. Anyone can do plot; but to give feeling and life, undoubted life, to characters on paper, that is to marvel at.