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![Faithful Place (Dublin Murder Squad, Book 3) by [Tana French]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41nost48JxL._SY346_.jpg)
Faithful Place (Dublin Murder Squad, Book 3) Kindle Edition
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Back in 1985, Frank Mackey was a nineteen-year-old kid with a dream of escaping hisi family's cramped flat on Faithful Place and running away to London with his girl, Rosie Daly. But on the night they were supposed to leave, Rosie didn't show. Frank took it for granted that she'd dumped him-probably because of his alcoholic father, nutcase mother, and generally dysfunctional family. He never went home again. Neither did Rosie. Then, twenty-two years later, Rosie's suitcase shows up behind a fireplace in a derelict house on Faithful Place, and Frank, now a detective in the Dublin Undercover squad, is going home whether he likes it or not.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherPenguin Books
- Publication dateMay 26, 2010
- Reading age18 years and up
- File size2249 KB
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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Sophie Hannah and Tana French: Author One-on-One
Sophie: Someone said to me recently that they found it strange we openly say we like each other's work, when we should surely regard each other as "the competition." I found this idea really weird. As far as I'm concerned, the only competition any writer ought to be interested in is the competition between good writing and bad writing. So, while I get very cross and resentful when a book that I think is terrible does well, I love it when books I think are great do well--I feel that the right side, i.e. good writing, is winning the competition, which I feel benefits me as much as anyone else, because I want to live in a world where brilliant books are valued. Also, if I think a book is better than anything I could write, then I want it to do better than my books in order to reflect that. I suppose what I'm saying is that I want there to be a meritocracy of literature. Would you agree or disagree?
Tana: I'd definitely love a meritocracy of literature--both for reasons of principle (same as you, I get jumping-up-and-down outraged if I see a good book sidelined in favor of what I consider a crap one) and for very practical reasons. It sort of ties in with why I've never seen you as "the competition." I love what you write. I think it's good. If someone picks up one of your books and reads it and likes it, I think it'll whet their appetite for good books--and, specifically, for good psychological crime. That makes them more likely, not less, to go looking for more and wind up reading something of mine.
Sophie, is there anything you wouldn’t write about for ethical reasons? I think mystery’s one of the most moral genres--it’s all about exploring right and wrong, finding truth, achieving justice, how these things are never black and white. We spend a lot of our time thinking about the more dangerous far reaches of morality and immorality. Any ethical lines you wouldn’t cross as a writer?
Sophie: There are no subjects that I think writers shouldn't write about--anything is a valid subject for fiction, and it's possible to handle any subject sensitively or insensitively. I think the ethics are in the way a writer treats a subject, not inherent in the subject itself. Having said that, there are things I don't think I could write about because I find them too horrible--the main one that springs to mind is state-sanctioned execution. If a film or book contains legal execution, I can't watch/read it. I find it too upsetting. The other subject I find too upsetting is fatal illness, especially when the terminally ill person is the loved one of the narrator--so, I guess since I wouldn't read about those things, I wouldn't write about them either! How about you, is there anything you wouldn't write about?
Tana: The one huge ethical issue, for me, is making sure that I give murder and murder victims the weight they deserve. I don't ever want to write something where the victim is simply a prop that's necessary in order for the story to get under way. Murder, taking another human being's life, is so earth-shatteringly huge: it doesn't just take one life, it affects everyone who comes into contact with it--families, friends, detectives working on the case, people who knew the killer.... I feel like using something so immense as a throwaway plot point would be unethical and cheap. I've got a responsibility to show that immensity, as far as possible.
I can't see myself ever writing about child abuse, but that's partly because it became so common in mystery books for a while there--either child abuse was the big secret that was revealed at the end, or else it was the killer's reason/excuse for murder. It got cheap. Apart from that, though, I'm not sure I can see myself avoiding a subject (not permanently, anyway) simply because it wrecks my head too badly. One of the reasons I write crime is in a attempt to understand things that I simply can't get my head around--how one human being can kill another, or deliberately damage another (like the sociopath in one of the books). So I tend to come back to the things that horrify me most, trying to understand them by writing about them.
People ask me a lot where I get the ideas for my plots, but someone recently asked me for the first time where I get the ideas for my characters. I thought that was a very cool question, so I’m passing it on. Where do yours come from?
Sophie: I agree with you absolutely about giving the crime the weight it deserves. Which is why I write books that some readers find upsetting. People should be upset about crime! The good thing about crime fiction (usually!) is that it attempts to deal with the worst things that can happen in a way that is uplifting--either because justice is done in the end, or because the light of understanding is shed upon the darkest corners of the human psyche. Even if all you do is understand why a monster behaves monstrously, it helps. I almost think understanding something does more good than fighting against it.
To answer your question, my characters come from the plot idea, always. I always start with an intriguing or mysterious situation, and then I work out how that plot starting point could develop. Usually, in order for it to develop as well as it can, it requires a certain kind of character. For example, in my novel The Dead Lie Down (published as The Other Half Lives in the UK), the opening mystery is that a man appears to be confessing to the murder of a woman who isn't dead. His girlfriend, to whom he confesses, knows that this woman isn't dead--and she's the one who keeps pursuing this until she finds out the truth. I needed her, therefore, to be the sort of person who wouldn't say, "Hang on a minute, you're a nutter, I'm off to find a sane boyfriend." So I thought, "What sort of woman would stay with a man she believed to be deluded?" And that was how the character of Ruth, the heroine, came into being--I gave her a past trauma that explained why she would cling to this man that loves her, even though he's driving her crazy and talking apparent nonsense. So I suppose what I'm saying is, plot comes first for me, and character follows shortly afterwards. Which comes first for you?
Tana: I'm with you on understanding it--I don't think it's possible to fight against evil unless you understand it or at least work to understand it. Otherwise, you're shooting in the dark. There's also the fact that I think the root of all real evil is lack of empathy--the inability to believe at any deep level that other people, people who are different from you, are still real. If I don't accept that people who do evil are real, if I see them as two-dimensional and don't at least accept the possibility of empathizing (not sympathizing, obviously) with their motivations and drives, then I take a step towards evil myself.
Plot and character--I work the other way around: I start with the character of the narrator and with a very basic premise, and then I dive in and hope to God there's a plot in there somewhere. With Faithful Place (my third book) I started out with the image of a battered old suitcase I'd seen thrown away outside a Georgian house that was being gutted--it made me start wondering where it had been found, and what if someone had hidden it there and meant to come back for it and never got the chance.... I had that, and the character of Frank Mackey--he showed up in The Likeness, as Cassie's undercover boss, the guy who'll do absolutely anything, to himself or anyone else, to get his man. I started thinking about the two things together--what if it was Frank's first love who had hidden that suitcase, what if they had been about to run away together, what if he always thought she had dumped him, and what if the suitcase resurfaced...
Sophie: I read a really interesting book recently about human evil. It's called People of the Lie, and it's by M. Scott Peck. Its subtitle is "Towards an Understanding of Human Evil." It's a superb book, and Peck's theory is that evil people are not necessarily those who do great harm, but those who cannot face the reality of their own faults, who have to lie to themselves and pretend they are always good, always in the right--thus making everyone wrong and worse. Peck believes that it's those who constantly lie to themselves about their own undiluted goodness, and sweep all the evidence of their moral flaws under the carpet of their own consciousness, who are truly evil. He sees the lying as a crucial part of the evil. So he would see someone who says, "Yeah, so I killed her? So what?" as less evil than the person who says, "I killed her because she's bad and I'm good, and so it was right to kill her." A lot of "baddies" do harm and don't care--which is obviously terrible, but Peck would say the people who do harm and believe it's good are worse--so people like Hitler, Saddam Hussein. Gordon Brown...just kidding!
Tana: Ooh. Interesting. The idea that evil isn't only in the action itself, but in the distortion of the surrounding reality, the destruction not just of people but of truth. ("We just sexed up the dossier...") That definitely ties in with mystery writing, where everything spins around the deep human impulse towards truth--the whole arc of the books is the movement towards truth, through various obstacles.
Sophie: Do you have a favorite of your books, and, if so, is that the same one as the one you think is the best? I can never decide which of mine I like best--I like them all in different ways, and I think they're all best and worst in different ways!
Tana: I'll probably always have a soft spot for In the Woods, simply because that was the first one and that was the one where, in some ways, I was taking the biggest risk--I put so much time and work and heart into it, I actually turned down acting work to finish it (if you know any actors, you know that turning down work is a HUGE deal, actors are the only people who always want to be working more)--and it was all just on hope, without any reason to think that this book would ever go anywhere except under my bed. I can't be objective enough to have any clue which one's the best, though. I don't think it helps that (maybe because of the different narrators) they're all very different in stuff like pace and tone. Apples and oranges. With the first two, by the time I'd finished all the copy-edits and proof-reads etc, I never wanted to see the bloody book again. That lasted till I saw the advance copies and was so stunned by the fact that this was a real book that I stopped hating the sight of it very fast! With Faithful Place, though, I've finished the proof-reads, haven't seen advance copies yet, and I still don't hate it. I'm hoping this is a good sign. Are there stages in the process when you like/hate yours?
Sophie: My favorite of yours would have to be In the Woods, but I think the best one is Faithful Place. Which means I should like it best, right? But there was one particular thing in In the Woods that I loved--Rob and Cassie's relationship and the way he ended up behaving. I've never come across such a good analysis in any other book of the way commitment-phobic men behave! I love my books when I have the idea, when I write the first hundred pages, and then again when they're in book form with their nice covers on! I hate them between page 100 and when they're finished--because that's when I'm laboring over them, and wondering whether I can make them fulfill the promise of the initial idea--and the end isn't in sight yet, so I feel weary. How important are titles to you? I can't start writing until I've got the title--it's a central part of the inspiration. My American titles are generally different, but I love them--I love all my titles. I hate thriller titles that just sound generic, like Dead Kill or something like that!
Tana: My favorite of yours is probably Hurting Distance because I love the fact that it doesn't focus on a murder. When rape comes up in mystery books, it's usually as an adjunct to the "real" crime of murder, rather than being the crime itself. I also think, without giving away too much, the angle on evil in that one is different from anything I've ever seen explored anywhere else. My favorite of your titles is A Room Swept White, though. I'm truly awful at titles--Faithful Place is the only one I came up with myself, I'm not even going to tell you what the first two books were called when they were living on my computer. I hate the generic wordplay-type titles too, but what I come up with if I'm left to my own devices isn't much better.
Tana French is the bestselling author of In the Woods, which won the Edgar, Barry, Macavity, and Anthony awards, and of The Likeness. She grew up in Ireland, Italy, Malawi, and the United States, and trained as an actor at Trinity College, Dublin. She lives in Dublin with her husband and daughter.
Sophie Hannah is an award-winning poet and crime fiction writer whose novels are international bestsellers.
--This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
From Booklist
From Bookmarks Magazine
About the Author
Review
-Booklist (starred)
"The charming narrative will leave readers begging for a sequel."
-Kirkus Reviews
"Part Raymond Chandler, part Roddy Doyle, crime fiction's rising star takes it into mesmerizing new territory . . . French's hypnotic storytelling remains in full force in this novel . . . Faithful Place is wrenching to a degree that detective fiction rarely achieves . . . French does something fresh with every novel, each one as powerful as the last but in a very different manner. Perhaps she has superpowers of her own? Whatever the source of her gift, it's only growing more miraculous with every book."
-Salon --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
From AudioFile
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
My father once told me that the most important thing every man should know is what he would die for. If you don’t know that, he said, what are you worth? Nothing. You’re not a man at all. I was thirteen and he was three quarters of the way into a bottle of Gordon’s finest, but hey, good talk. As far as I recall, he was willing to die a) for Ireland, b) for his mother, who had been dead for ten years, and c) to get that bitch Maggie Thatcher.
All the same, at any moment of my life since that day, I could have told you straight off the bat exactly what I would die for. At first it was easy: my family, my girl, my home. Later, for a while, things got more complicated. These days they hold steady, and I like that; it feels like something a man can be proud of. I would die for, in no particular order, my city, my job, and my kid.
The kid is well behaved so far, the city is Dublin, and the job is on the Undercover Squad, so it may sound obvious which one I’m most likely to wind up dying for, but it’s been a while since work handed me anything scarier than a paperwork megaturd. The size of this country means a field agent’s shelf life is short; two ops, maybe four, and your risk of being spotted gets too high. I used up my nine lives a long time back. I stay behind the scenes, for now, and run operations of my own.
Here’s the real risk in Undercover, in the field and out: you create illusions for long enough, you start thinking you’re in control. It’s easy to slide into believing you’re the hypnotist here, the mirage master, the smart cookie who knows what’s real and how all the tricks are done. The fact is you’re still just another slack-jawed mark in the audience. No matter how good you are, this world is always going to be better at this game. It’s more cunning than you are, it’s faster and it’s a whole lot more ruthless. All you can do is try to keep up, know your weak spots and never stop expecting the sucker punch.
The second time my life geared up for the sucker punch, it was a Friday afternoon at the beginning of December. I had spent the day doing maintenance work on some of my current mirages—one of my boys, who would not be getting any cookies from Uncle Frank in his Christmas stocking, had got himself into a situation wherein, for complex reasons, he needed an elderly lady whom he could introduce to several low-level drug dealers as his granny—and I was heading over to my ex-wife’s place to pick up my kid for the weekend. Olivia and Holly live in a jaw-droppingly tasteful semi-d on a manicured cul-de-sac in Dalkey. Olivia’s daddy gave it to us for a wedding present. When we moved in, it had a name instead of a number. I got rid of that fast, but still, I should have copped right then that this marriage was never going to work. If my parents had known I was getting married, my ma would have gone deep into hock at the credit union, bought us a lovely floral living-room suite and been outraged if we took the plastic off the cushions.
Olivia kept herself bang in the middle of the doorway, in case I got ideas about coming in. “Holly’s almost ready,” she said.
Olivia, and I say this hand on heart with the proper balance of smugness and regret, is a stunner: tall, with a long elegant face, plenty of soft ashblond hair and the kind of discreet curves you don’t notice at first and then can’t stop noticing. That evening she was smoothed into an expensive black dress and delicate tights and her grandmother’s diamond necklace that only comes out on big occasions, and the Pope himself would have whipped off his skullcap to mop his brow. Me being a less classy guy than the Pope, I wolf whistled. “Big date?”
“We’re going for dinner.”
“Does ‘we’ involve Dermo again?”
Olivia is way too smart to let me yank her chain that easily. “His name’s Dermot, and yes, it does.”
I did impressed. “That’s four weekends running, am I right? Tell me something: is tonight the big night?”
Olivia called up the stairs, “Holly! Your father’s here!” While she had her back turned, I headed on past her into the hall. She was wearing Chanel No. 5, same as she has ever since we met.
Upstairs: “Daddy! I’m coming I’m coming I’m coming, I just have to . . .” and then a long intent stream of chatter, as Holly explained her complicated little head without caring whether anyone could hear her. I yelled, “You take your time, sweetheart!” on my way into the kitchen.
Olivia followed me. “Dermot will be here any minute,” she told me. I wasn’t clear on whether this was a threat or a plea.
I flipped open the fridge and had a look inside. “I don’t like the cut of that fella. He’s got no chin. I never trust a man with no chin.”
“Well, fortunately, your taste in men isn’t relevant here.”
“It is if you’re getting serious enough that he’ll be spending time around Holly. What’s his surname again?”
Once, back when we were heading for the split, Olivia slammed the fridge door on my head. I could tell she was thinking about doing it again. I stayed leaning over, to give her every opportunity, but she kept her cool. “Why do you want to know?”
“I’ll need to run him through the computer.” I pulled out a carton of orange juice and gave it a shake. “What’s this crap? When did you stop buying the good stuff?”
Olivia’s mouth—subtle nude lipstick—was starting to tighten. “You will not run Dermot through any computer, Frank.”
“Got no choice,” I told her cheerfully. “I have to make sure he’s not a kiddie-fiddler, haven’t I?”
“Sweet Lord, Frank! He is not—”
“Maybe not,” I acknowledged. “Probably not. But how can you be sure, Liv? Wouldn’t you rather be safe than sorry?” I uncapped the juice and took a swig.
“Holly!” Olivia called, louder. “Hurry up!”
“I can’t find my horse!” A bunch of thumps, overhead.
I told Olivia, “They target single mammies with lovely little kids. And it’s amazing how many of them don’t have chins. Have you never noticed that?”
“No, Frank, I haven’t. And I won’t have you using your job to intimidate—”
“Take a good look next time there’s a pedo on the telly. White van and no chin, I guarantee you. What does Dermo drive?”
“Holly!”
I had another big gulp of juice, wiped off the spout with my sleeve and stuck the carton back in the fridge. “That tastes like cat’s piss. If I up the child support, will you buy decent juice?”
“If you tripled it,” Olivia said sweetly and coldly, glancing at her watch, “not that you could, it might just about cover one carton a week.” Kitty has claws, if you keep pulling her tail for long enough.
At this point Holly saved both of us from ourselves by shooting out of her room calling, “Daddydaddydaddy!” at the top of her lungs. I made it to the bottom of the stairs in time for her to take a flying leap at me like a little spinning firework, all gold cobweb hair and pink sparkly things, wrapping her legs round my waist and whacking me in the back with her schoolbag and a fuzzy pony called Clara that had seen better days.
“Hello, spider monkey,” I said, kissing the top of her head. She was light as a fairy. “How was your week?”
“Very busy and I’m not a spider monkey,” she told me severely, nose to nose. “What’s a spider monkey?”
Holly is nine and the fine-boned, easy-bruised spit of her mother’s family—us Mackeys are sturdy and thick-skinned and thick-haired, built for hard work in Dublin weather—all except for her eyes. The first time I ever saw her she looked up at me with my own eyes, great wide bright-blue eyes that hit me like a Taser zap, and they still make my heart flip over every time. Olivia can scrape off my surname like an out-of-date address label, load up the fridge with juice I don’t like and invite Dermo the Pedo to fill my side of the bed, but there’s not a thing she can do about those eyes.
I told Holly, “It’s a magic fairy monkey that lives in an enchanted wood.” She gave me a look that was perfectly balanced between Wow and Nice try. “What has you so busy?”
She slid off me and landed on the floor with a thump. “Chloe and Sarah and me are going to have a band. I drew you a picture in school because we made up a dance and can I have white boots? And Sarah wrote a song and . . .” For a second there Olivia and I almost smiled at each other, across her head, before Olivia caught herself and checked her watch again.
In the drive we crossed paths with my friend Dermo, who—as I know for a fact, because I snagged his plate number the first time he and Olivia went out to dinner—is an impeccably law-abiding guy who has never even parked his Audi on a double yellow, and who can’t help looking like he lives life on the verge of a massive belch. “Evening,” he said, giving me an electrocuted nod. I think Dermo may be scared of me. “Holly.”
“What do you call him?” I asked Holly, when I had fastened her into her booster seat and Olivia, perfect as Grace Kelly, was kissing Dermo’s cheek in the doorway.
Holly rearranged Clara’s mane and shrugged. “Mum says to call him Uncle Dermot.”
“And do you?”
“No. Out loud I don’t call him anything. In my head I call him Squidface.” She checked in the rearview mirror, to see if I was going to give out about that. Her chin was all ready to turn stubborn.
I started to laugh. “Beautiful,” I told her. “That’s my girl,” and I did a handbrake turn to make Olivia and Squidface jump.
Since Olivia got sense and kicked me out, I live on the quays, in a massive apartment block built in the nineties by, apparently, David Lynch. The carpets are so deep that I’ve never heard a footstep, but even at four in the morning you can feel the hum of five hundred minds buzzing on every side of you: people dreaming, hoping, worrying, planning, thinking. I grew up in a tenement house, so you would think I’d be good with the factory-farm lifestyle, but this is different. I don’t know these people; I never even see these people. I have no idea how or when they get in and out of the place. For all I know they never leave, just stay barricaded in their apartments, thinking Even in my sleep I’ve got one ear tuned to that buzz, ready to leap out of bed and defend my territory if I need to.
The decor in my personal corner of Twin Peaks is divorcé chic, by which I mean that, four years on, it still looks like the moving van hasn’t arrived yet. The exception is Holly’s room, which is loaded with every fluffy pastel object known to man. The day we went looking for furniture together, I had finally managed to wrestle one weekend a month out of Olivia, and I wanted to buy Holly everything on three floors of the shopping center. A part of me had believed I’d never see her again.
“What are we doing tomorrow?” she wanted to know, as we headed up the padded corridor. She was trailing Clara on the carpet by one leg. Last I’d looked, she would have screamed bloody murder at the thought of that horse touching the floor. Blink and you miss something.
“Remember that kite I got you? Finish all your homework tonight, and if it’s not raining I’ll bring you to the Phoenix Park and teach you to fly it.”
“Can Sarah come?”
“We’ll ring her mum after dinner.” Holly’s mates’ parents love me. Nothing feels more responsible than having a detective take your kid to the park.
“Dinner! Can we get pizza?”
“Sure,” I said. Olivia lives an additive-free, organic, high-fiber life; if I don’t do a little counterbalancing, the kid will grow up twice as healthy as all her mates and feel left out. “Why not?” and then I unlocked the door and got my first hint that Holly and I weren’t getting any pizza tonight. The voice-mail light on my phone was going apeshit. Five missed calls. Work rings me on my mobile, field agents and confidential informants ring me on my other mobile, the lads know they’ll see me in the pub when they see me, and Olivia sends me text messages when she has to. That left family, which meant my kid sister Jackie, seeing as she was the only one I’d talked to in a couple of decades. Five calls probably meant one of our parents was dying.
I told Holly, “Here,” and held out my laptop. “You take that to your room and annoy your mates on IM. I’ll be in to you in a few minutes.”
Holly, who knows well that she isn’t allowed to go online in private till she’s twenty-one, gave me a skeptical look. “If you want a cigarette, Daddy,” she told me, very maturely, “you can just go out on the balcony. I know you smoke.”
I steered her towards her room with a hand on her back. “Oh, yeah? What makes you think that?” At any other time I would have been seriously curious. I’ve never smoked in front of Holly, and Olivia wouldn’t have told her. We made her mind, the two of us; the idea of it containing things we didn’t put there still blows me away.
“I just know,” Holly said, dumping Clara and her bag on her bed and looking lofty. The kid’ll make a detective yet. “And you shouldn’t. Sister Mary Therese says it turns all your insides black.”
“Sister Mary Therese is dead right. Smart woman.” I switched on the laptop and hooked up the broadband line. “There you go. I’ve to make a phone call. Don’t be buying any diamonds on eBay.”
Holly asked, “Are you going to ring your girlfriend?”
She looked tiny and way too wise, standing there in her white padded coat that came halfway down her skinny legs, wide eyes trying not to look scared. “No,” I said. “No, sweetheart. I don’t have a girlfriend.”
“Swear?”
“I swear. I’m not planning on getting one anytime soon, either. In a few years maybe you can pick one out for me. How’s that?”
“I want Mum to be your girlfriend.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I know.” I put my hand on her head for a second; her hair felt like petals. Then I closed her door behind me and went back to the living room to find out who had died.
It was Jackie on the voice mail, all right, and she was going like an express train. Bad sign: Jackie brakes for good news (“You’ll never guess what happened. Go on, have guess”) and floors the pedal for bad. This was Formula 1 stuff . “Ah, Jaysus, Francis, would you ever pick up your bleeding phone, I need to talk to you, I’m not just ringing you for the laugh, do I ever? Now before you go getting a fright, it’s not Mammy, God forbid, she’s grand, a bit shook up but sure aren’t we all, she was having palpitations there at first but she had a sit-down and Carmel gave her a drink of brandy and she’s grand now, aren’t you, Mam? Thank God Carmel was there, she does call round most Fridays after the shopping, she rang me and Kevin to come down. Shay said not to be ringing you, what’s the point, he said, but I told him to feck off for himself, it’s only fair, so if you’re at home would you ever pick up this phone and talk to me? Francis! I swear to God—” The message space ran out with a beep.
Carmel and Kevin and Shay, oh my. It sounded very much like the entire family had descended on my parents’ place. My da; it had to be. “Daddy!” Holly yelled, from her room. “How many cigarettes do you smoke every day?”
The voice-mail lady told me to press buttons; I followed orders. “Who says I smoke?”
“I need to know! Twenty?”
For a start. “Maybe.”
Jackie again: “Bleeding machines, I wasn’t finished! Come here, I should’ve said right away, it’s not Da either, he’s the same as ever, no one’s dead or hurt or nothing, or anyway we’re all grand. Kevin’s a bit upset but I think that’s because he’s worried about how you’ll take it, he’s awful fond of you, you know, he still is. Now it might be nothing, Francis, I don’t want you losing the head, right, it could all be a joke, someone messing, that’s what we thought at first, although pretty shite joke if you ask me, excuse my language—”
“Daddy! How much exercise do you get?”
What the hell? “I’m a secret ballet dancer.”
“Noooo, seriously! How much?”
“Not enough.”
“—and sure, none of us have a clue what to be doing with it an’ anyway, so would you ever ring me as soon as you get this? Please, Francis. I’ll have my mobile in my hand, now.”
Click, beep, voice-mail babe. Looking back, I should have figured it out by that point, or at least I should have got the general idea. “Daddy? How much fruit and vegetables do you eat?”
“Truckloads.”
“You do not!”
“Some.”
The next three messages were more of the same, at half-hour intervals. By the last one, Jackie had reached the point where only small dogs could hear her.
“Daddy?”
“Give me a sec, sweetie.”
I took my mobile out on the balcony, above the dark river and the greasy orange lights and the running snarl of the traffic jams, and phoned Jackie. She answered on the first ring. “Francis? Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I’ve been going mental! Where were you?”
She had slowed down to about eighty miles an hour. “Picking up Holly. What the hell, Jackie?”
Background noise. Even after all that time, I knew the quick bite of Shay’s voice straight away. One note of my ma caught me right in the throat.
“Ah, God, Francis . . . Would you sit down for me, now? Or get yourself a glass of brandy, something like that?”
“Jackie, if you don’t tell me what’s going on, I swear I’m going to come over there and strangle you.”
“Hang on, hold your horses . . .” A door closing. “Now,” Jackie said, into sudden quiet. “Right. D’you remember I was telling you a while back, some fella’s after buying up the three houses at the top of the Place? To turn into apartments?”
“Yeah.”
“He’s not doing the apartments after all, now everyone’s after getting all worried about property prices; he’s leaving the houses a while and see what happens. So he got the builders in to take out the fireplaces and the moldings and that, to sell—there’s people pay good money for those yokes, did you know that? mentallers—and they started today, on the one up on the corner. D’you remember, the derelict one?”
“Number Sixteen.”
“That’s the one. They were taking out the fireplaces, and up behind one of them they found a suitcase.”
Dramatic pause. Drugs? Guns? Cash? Jimmy Hoff a? “Fuck’s sake, Jackie. What?”
“It’s Rosie Daly’s, Francis. It’s her case.”
All the layers of traffic noise vanished, snapped right off . That orange glow across the sky turned feral and hungry as forest fire, blinding, out of control.
“No,” I said, “it’s not. I don’t know where the hell you got that, but it’s a load of my arse.”
“Ah, now, Francis—”
Concern and sympathy were pouring off her voice. If she’d been there, I think I would have punched her lights out. “‘Ah, now, Francis,’ nothing. You and Ma have yourselves worked up into some hysterical frenzy over sweet fuck-all, and now you want me to play along—”
“Listen to me, I know you’re—”
“Unless this is all some stunt to get me over there. Is that it, Jackie? Are you aiming for some big family reconciliation? Because I’m warning you now, this isn’t the fucking Hallmark Channel and that kind of game isn’t going to end well.”
“You big gobshite, you,” Jackie snapped. “Get a hold of yourself. What do you think I am? There’s a shirt in that case, a purple paisley yoke, Carmel recognizes it—”
I’d seen it on Rosie a hundred times, knew what the buttons felt like under my fingers. “Yeah, from every girl in this town in the eighties. Carmel’d recognize Elvis walking down Grafton Street for a bit of gossip. I thought you had better sense, but apparently—”
“—and there’s a birth cert wrapped inside it. Rose Bernadette Daly.” Which more or less killed that line of conversation. I found my smokes, leaned my elbows on the railing and took the longest drag of my life.
“Sorry,” Jackie said, softer. “For biting your head off . Francis?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you all right?”
“Yeah. Listen to me, Jackie. Do the Dalys know?”
“They’re not in. Nora moved out to Blanchardstown, I think it was, a few years back; Mr. Daly and Mrs. Daly go over to her on Friday nights, to see the baba. Mammy thinks she has the number somewhere, but—”
“Have you called the Guards?”
“Only you, sure.”
“Who else knows about this?”
“The builders, only. A couple of Polish young fellas, they are. When they finished up for the day they went across to Number Fifteen, to ask was there anyone they could give the case back to, but Number Fifteen’s students now, so they sent the Polish fellas down to Ma and Da.”
“And Ma hasn’t told the whole road? Are you sure?”
“The Place isn’t the same as you remember it. Half of it’s students and yuppies, these days; we wouldn’t even know their names. The Cullens are still here, and the Nolans and some of the Hearnes, but Mammy didn’t want to say anything to them till she’d told the Dalys. It wouldn’t be right.”
“Good. Where’s the case now?”
“It’s in the front room. Should the builders not have moved it? They had to get on with their work—”
“It’s grand. Don’t touch it any more unless you have to. I’ll be over as fast as I can.”
A second of silence. Then: “Francis. I don’t want to be thinking anything terrible, God bless us, but does this not mean that Rosie . . .”
“We don’t know anything yet,” I said. “Just sit tight, don’t talk to anyone, and wait for me.”
I hung up and took a quick look into the apartment behind me. Holly’s door was still shut. I finished my smoke in one more marathon drag, tossed the butt over the railing, lit another and rang Olivia.
She didn’t even say hello. “No, Frank. Not this time. Not a chance.”
“I don’t have a choice, Liv.”
“You begged for every weekend. Begged. If you didn’t want them—”
“I do want them. This is an emergency.”
“It always is. The squad can survive without you for two days, Frank. No matter what you’d like to think, you’re not indispensable.”
To anyone more than a foot away, her voice would have sounded light and chatty, but she was furious. Tinkling cutlery, arch hoots of laughter; something that sounded like, God help us, a fountain. “It’s not work this time,” I said. “It’s family.”
“It is, of course. Would this have anything to do with the fact that I’m on my fourth date with Dermot?”
“Liv, I would happily do a lot to wreck your fourth date with Dermot, but I’d never give up time with Holly. You know me better than that.”
A short, suspicious pause. “What kind of family emergency?”
“I don’t know yet. Jackie rang me in hysterics, from my parents’ place; I can’t work out the details. I need to get over there fast.”
Another pause. Then Olivia said, on a long tired breath, “Right. We’re in the Coterie. Drop her down.”
The Coterie has a TV-based chef and gets hand-jobbed in a lot of weekend supplements. It badly needs firebombing. “Thanks, Olivia. Seriously I’ll pick her up later tonight, if I can, or tomorrow morning. I’ll ring you.”
“You do that,” Olivia said. “If you can, of course,” and she hung up. I threw my smoke away and went inside to finish pissing off the women in my life.
Holly was sitting cross-legged on her bed, with the computer on her lap and a worried look on her face. “Sweetheart,” I said, “we’ve got a problem.” She pointed at the laptop. “Daddy, look.”
The screen said, in big purple letters surrounded by an awful lot of flashing graphics, you will die at the age of 52. The kid looked really upset. I sat down on the bed behind her and pulled her and the computer onto my lap. “What’s all this?”
“Sarah found this quiz online and I did it for you and it said this. You’re forty-one.”
Oh, Jesus, not now. “Chickadee, it’s the internet. Anyone can put anything on there. That doesn’t make it real.”
“It says! They figured it all out!”
Olivia was going to love me if I gave Holly back in tears. “Let me show you something,” I said. I reached around her, got rid of my death sentence, opened up a Word document and typed in, you are a space alien. You are reading this on the planet bongo. “Now. Is that true?”
Holly managed a watery giggle. “Course not.”
I turned it purple and gave it a fancy font. “How about now?”
Head-shake.
“How about if I got the computer to ask you a bunch of questions before it said that? Would it be true then?”
For a second I thought I’d got through, but then those narrow shoulders went rigid. “You said a problem.”
“Yeah. We’re going to have to change our plans just a little bit.”
“I have to go back to Mum’s,” Holly said, to the laptop. “Don’t I?”
“Yep, sweetie. I’m really, really sorry. I’ll come get you the second I can.”
“Does work need you again?”
That again felt worse than anything Olivia could dish out. “No,” I said, leaning sideways so I could see Holly’s face. “It’s nothing to do with work. Work can take a long walk off a short pier, am I right?” That got a faint smile. “You know your auntie Jackie? She’s got a big problem, and she needs me to sort it out for her right now.”
“Can’t I come with you?”
Both Jackie and Olivia have tried hinting, occasionally, that Holly should get to know her dad’s family. Sinister suitcases aside, over my dead body does Holly dip a toe in the bubbling cauldron of crazy that is the Mackeys at their finest. “Not this time. Once I’ve fixed everything, we’ll bring Auntie Jackie for an ice cream somewhere, will we? To cheer us all up?”
“Yeah,” Holly said, on a tired little breath exactly like Olivia’s. “That’d be fun,” and she disentangled herself from my lap and started putting her stuff back into her schoolbag.
In the car Holly kept up a running conversation with Clara, in a subdued little voice too quiet for me to hear. At every red light I looked at her in the rearview mirror and swore to myself that I’d make it up to her: get hold of the Dalys’ phone number, dump the damn suitcase on their doorstep and have Holly back at El Rancho Lyncho by bedtime. I already knew it wasn’t going to work out that way. That road and that suitcase had been waiting for me to come back for a long time. Now that they’d got their hooks in, what they had saved up for me was going to take a lot more than one evening.
The note had the bare minimum of teen-queen melodrama; she was always good that way, was Rosie. I know this is going to be a shock and I’m sorry but please don’t be feeling like I messed you around on purpose, I never wanted to do that. Only I’ve thought about it really hard, this is the only way I’ll ever have a decent chance at the kind of life I want. I just wish I could do it and not hurt you/upset you/disappoint you. It would be great if you could wish me luck in my new life in England!! but if you can’t I understand.
I swear I’ll come back someday. Till then, loads and loads and loads of love,
Rosie.
In between the moment when she left that note on the floor of Number 16, in the room where we had our first kiss, and the moment when she went to heave her suitcase over some wall and get the hell out of Dodge, something had happened.
--This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.From Publishers Weekly
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
Product details
- ASIN : B003NX764O
- Publisher : Penguin Books; Reprint edition (May 26, 2010)
- Publication date : May 26, 2010
- Language : English
- File size : 2249 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 449 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #21,537 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #155 in Mystery Action Fiction (Kindle Store)
- #191 in Witch & Wizard Mysteries
- #369 in Action Thriller Fiction
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Tana French is the author of In the Woods, The Likeness, Faithful Place, Broken Harbor, The Secret Place, and The Trespasser. Her books have won awards including the Edgar, Anthony, Macavity, and Barry awards, the Los Angeles Times Award for Best Mystery/Thriller, and the Irish Book Award for Crime Fiction. She lives in Dublin with her family.
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Frank Mackey (who was introduced in The Likeness) is an undercover cop who doesn't always play by the rules and cut ties with his family when he left home more than two decades ago. In the prologue, we're with 19-year-old Frank as he waits for his love, Rosie Daly, to meet him in the wee hours of the morning on their street called Faithful Place. They plan to run away to England and make a new life for themselves--far away from their dysfunctional families and the spiral of poverty and "small" lives that tend to entrap residents of the Place. But Rosie never shows, and Frank has always believed that she left without him. Now, 22 years later, Rosie's suitcase (along with her ferry tickets to England) show up in an abandoned house on Faithful Place. When his sister Jackie tells Frank the news, he reluctantly returns home. The discovery of the suitcase shakes the foundations of Frank's entire life: What if Rosie didn't leave him behind? What if she never left at all? This time, Frank won't be able to escape Faithful Place as long-buried secrets begin to surface and bind Frank to the place he fought to escape his whole life.
WHO do we meet?
Frank Mackey, the narrator of the book. The foundation of Frank's entire life is shifting under him as he's forced to confront the past and the way of life he hoped to leave behind forever. His pain and discomfort at having to face his family again is agonizing, and he must call on all of his skills as an undercover cop to figure out what happened to Rosie all those years ago.
The members of the Mackey family that Frank left behind, including: his sister Jackie, the only family member that Frank has stayed in touch with; Shay, the oldest brother who harbors resentment that his younger siblings got a better life while he and the eldest sister Carmel bore the brunt of their parent's cruelty; and Kevin, the youngest brother, who has lived a sheltered existence thanks to the protection of his older siblings. The matriarch of the family, Ma, is viewed by her children as a nag and a manipulator, but she's put up for years with her abusive, alcoholic, chronically unemployed husband, Da.
Frank's 9-year-old daughter Holly, who is growing up faster than Frank would like and, despite Frank's best efforts, seems to have some Mackey blood in her.
Olivia, Frank's ex-wife, who always sensed Frank was waiting for "the one who got away" but tried to love him anyway. Their shared love and concern for Holly keep them tied to each other, despite Olivia having a few secrets of her own.
WHEN and WHERE does the book take place?
The events of the book take place in 2007, primarily in Frank's old neighborhood in Dublin called The Liberties, which Frank describes like this.
The Liberties got their name, hundreds of years ago, because they went their own way and made their own rules. The rules in my road went like this: no matter how skint you are, if you go to the pub then you stand your round; if your mate gets into a fight, you stick around to drag him off as soon as you see blood, so no one loses face; you leave the heroin to them down in the flats; even if you're an anarchist punk rocker this month, you go to Mass on Sunday; and no matter what, you never, ever squeal on anyone.
Frank also flashes back to the past, primarily 1985 when he and Rosie were together and making their plans for escape.
WHY should you read this book?
Tana French is a master of weaving complex, psychologically suspenseful stories that put you fully into the mind and environment of the narrator. Considering that French always gives her protagonists a complex mystery to solve, tensions always run high and I've read all her books with a feeling of doom and dread hanging over me. Yet I always find something to love about her characters and some sort of humor. In this book, I found Frank--despite his often morally dubious methods--to be a stand-up guy. In some ways, he reminded me Mikael Blomquist in the Steig Larrson books. In addition, the charm of the Irish way of talking and the vivid portrait of life on Faithful Place creates a richly drawn world that I felt like I was visiting whenever I read the book. The bottom line is that Tana French writes intelligent, character-driven mysteries that come alive in ways that affect your mind and soul. She hasn't written a bad book yet, and I'd list her as one of my favorite authors. My only complaint is that she isn't more prolific!
Note: Now that I've read all three Tana French novels, I'm anxiously awaiting her next one, which is due in 2012. Because each of her books focus on a character that appeared in previous books, I was trying to guess who might be featured in her next novel. My money was on the young detective Stephen (who Frank manipulates and mentors in this book), but then I found this interview, which reveals that Scorcher Kennedy will be the next narrator. Although this threw me for a loop as I wasn't exactly drawn to Scorcher in this book, I trust Tana French implicitly, and I'll be buying her book the second it comes out.
(2) The Likeness: A Novel , and (3) Faithful Place: A Novel . Start at the beginning and absorb the amazing prose style you will not soon
forget.
The publisher's blurb sets the scene:
"Back in 1985 Frank Mackey was nineteen, growing up poor in Dublin's
innter city, crammed into a small flat with his family on Faithful Place. But his
sights were set on more. He and Rosie Daly were going to run away to London, get married,
get good jobs, break away from poverty and their old lives. But the night they were
supposed to leave,Rosie didn't show. Frank assumed that she dumped him and never went
home again. Neither did Rosie. Now, twenty-two years later, Rosie's suitcase shows up
in a derelict house on Faithful Place. . . ."
Frank Mackey narrates the tale. He is back home. working the Undercover
Squad, searching for answers in the Cold Case of his sweet Rosie Daly.
French's prose style is humorous: (1)Sketch of Mackey's ex, Olivia:
"Olivia, and I say this hand on heart with the proper balance of smugness and regret,
is a stunner: tall, with a long elegant face, plenty of soft ashe-blond hair and the
kind of discreet curves you don't notice at first and then can't stop noticing. That
evening she was smoothed into an expensive black dress and delicate tights and her
grandmother's diamond necklace that only comes out on big occasions, and the Pope
himself would have whipped off his skullcap to mop his brow. Me, being a less classy
guy than the Pope, I wolf whistled" {Page 13) (2)Sketchof Mackey's "cop school"
acquaintance, Scorcher Kennedy: "One of the many differences between Murder and
Undercover is our attitudes to subtlety. Undercovers are even better at it than you
think, and when we feel like a giggle we do love watching the Murder Boys loving their
entrances. These two swung around the corner in an unmarked silver BMW that didn't
need markings, braked hard, left the car at a dramatic angle, slammed their doors in
sync - they had probably been practicing - and swaggered off towards Number 16 with the
music from HAWAII FIVE-O blasting through their heads in full surround-sound. One of
them was a ferret- faced blond kid, still perfecting the walk and trying hard to keep
up, the other one was my age, with a shiny leather brief case swinging from one hand,
and he wore his swagger like it was part of his El Snazzo suit. The cavalry had
arrived, and it was Scorcher Kennedy." {Page 149}.
French's prose style is poetic: (1)"A Sunday morning in Advent, cold,
with a gray-white sky and breath hanging in the air like fog." {Page 91} and
(2)"The clouds had moved in lower over the rooftops, and the light had changed, turned
a bruised, dangerous purplish-white." {Page 143}.
French's prose style is heart-warming: " 'Here, yous,' two dark-haired,
round-eyed little girls were sprawled on the front-room floor - 'Go on upstairs and play
in your room, give me some peace while I talk to this fella here. Go on!' She shooed
the girls out with her hands.
'They're the image of you,' I said,nodding after them.
'They're a pair of little wagons, so they are. They've worn me out.
I'm not joking you. My ma says its my comeuppance, for all the times I put the
heart crossways in her when I was a young one.' She whipped half-dressed dolls
and sweet wrappers and broken crayons off the sofa." {Pages 104-105}.
French's prose style is heart-wrenching: "Dying had caved his face in
under the cheekbones and around the mouth; he looked forty years older than he would
ever be. THe upturned side of his face was ice white; the lower side, where the
blood had settled, was mottled purple. There was a crusty thread of blood coming
from his nose, and where his jaw had dropped I could see that his front teeth were
broken. His hair was limp and dark with rain. One eyelid drooped a little over a
cloudy eye, like a sly stupid wink. It was like I had been shoved under an enormous
battering waterfall, like the force of it was ripping my breath away." {Page 277}.
French's prose style is also too-often vulgar, too-often profance.
Yes, it is authentic, but, I feel the vulgarity and profanity is over done and
weakens the amazing prose style of Tana French. Thank you.
Top reviews from other countries

First, I worked out who was the killer almost as soon as they were introduced as a character. It didn't spoil the book, but it just made me hyper aware of them in each scene. Which in turn reinforced my impression.
Second, and this is a deeper point about Tana's writing style. The three Dublin Murder Squad books so far have all been from a different point of view character, but Tana French's narrative style - her prose and descriptions - don't vary much from character to character. Now, don't get me wrong I LIKE her style, but I find it hard to suspend my disbelief the three very different characters (Young man sent to boarding school in England, ballsy woman, older guy from the Liberties) would all three of them undertake soliloquies on the nature of summer light or the fragile quality of a snowflake - for example. After three books, it is easy to spot the places where the author is on the page as opposed to the characters themselves. Which is a shame, because she does draw excellent characters.


I loved Faithful Place just as much as I loved the first 2 novels in the series. Yet again it is written in the first person and Tana develops her brand. Although each book is written from the point of view of a different detective each time, you still get the same strong feeling that you are part of the scene and are in the loop.
Yet again this book can be read as a stand-alone. The accent this time is on family life. Although the 2 murders are solved, it is not by regular police work but by Frank working friends and family. I particularly liked the dialogue running through this novel. It is written with a strong Dublin accent and Frank’s mother is the big surprise. Simply put, every time I read her spoken words, all I could think of was Brendan O’Carroll acting the role of Agnes Brown in the extremely popular BBC sitcom Mrs. Brown’s Boys.
Faithful Place moves away from regular murder and police thrillers. This is centered around the dynamics of family life and the meaning of home. There was plenty of back story and Frank’s character was fully developed. Although the tale runs back and forth with Frank’s teenage years 22 years ago, it was told skillfully and this time shifting did not annoy me, it simply added depth to this novel. I really enjoyed reading this book and it gets the top score of 5 stars from me.

These are not rapid page turner detactive stories, there is excellent characterisation, and I like to read them more slowly, to give time to refelct and ponder over what's going on. And they are flawed people, real people, which makes their stories all the more interesting.
You certainly could read these on the beach or the aeroplane, but read them now, before the summer blockbusters take over!
