Faithful Place [Paperback]

Tana French has been a cut above from the word go. Her haunting debut In the Woods left no doubt in my mind that a distinctive new voice in crime fiction had spoken up, demanding a fair hearing, and though French's next novel had its issues - perhaps The Likeness was a touch too Murder She Wrote in the belief-beggaring mystery of coincidence at its core - nevertheless its was a gripping read, so taut and thrilling and refreshingly character-driven most longtime crime writers would have stood to learn a thing or two from it.

Well you ain't seen nothin' yet.

Faithful Place in French's best yet, and by a country mile. With a brilliantly conflicted new protagonist to come to grips with, and a grim new neighbourhood with its very own closet full of skeletons to explore, the Irish import of the hour ably breaks away from the pack, delivering an unabashedly heartfelt portrait of a people, a place, and a time.

Twenty years ago, Frank Mackey planned to escape Faithful Place with his gorgeous girlfriend, Rosie Daly. The son and the daughter of two tight-knit families at war with one another over a long-forgotten grudge, these star-cross'd lovers had hoped to run away from the estate, to take off towards the bright city lights of London and never return. In secret the pair packed their bags, arranged with great care a rendezvous point from which they would stage their daring flight, and bided their sweet time.

But come the appointed hour, there was no sign of Rosie. Frank waited for her the whole night through... but nothing. And with the dawning of the next day came the dawning realisation that the love of his life had stood him up. Rather than coming crawling back to the Mackeys, with his tail between his legs, Frank resolved instead to forge on with the plan, such as it was.

The one that got away has been the bane of his existence ever since, so when Frank - an undercover detective now, working for the Dublin police force - when Frank gets wind of the discovery of a suitcase filled with Rosie's things stuffed up the chimney flue of Number 16, Faithful Place, and returns home to hear tell of a rank smell as of rotting rats in the same abandoned building shortly after he and the Daly girl were presumed to have run away together, he must face the very real possibility that twenty years ago, Rosie met a markedly more awful fate than the life he has imagined her living ever since: murder.

As dark as anything Tana French has written, as fraught with cruelty, loss, and the corruption of quiet hope, Faithful Place is yet an indelibly endearing novel. Charming in a thuggish sort of sense, say like Jason Statham coming home for a cup of tea, and funny in the way a Glasgow kiss might be, if it went badly wrong - as so often such things do - Faithful Place will surely grab you from the get-go, disarming you with its warmth and its humanity, disturbing you with its brutal honesty, and insight.

It's somewhat off-kilter as far as crime fiction goes - but then this author has made that style of narrative her stock in trade - and perhaps French can be a little over-verbose when directness is all such-and-such a moment demands, but these are niggles... nothings, really, next to the fabulously alarming way your heart will pound when inevitably, Frank confronts a killer.

Faithful Place is crime fiction at its very finest. A tragic tale, brilliantly told... loving but bittersweet... and told with such prescient truth that you'll be a mess well before the end: the latest from Tana French? Superb.

I read "Into the Woods" and really enjoyed it then bought "The Likeness" which bored me so much I gave up half way through. Then with much trepidation bought "Faithful Place" WOW what a tale I was hooked immediately. The characters are brilliantly drawn and totally true to life (I am a Dubliner myself) and I was so moved by the love story between Frank & Rosie it brought tears to my eyes on several occasions. I did however guess the killer quite early on but this in no way put me off the story. Tana's understanding of Dublin and particularly in the 1980's is spot on, not sure if she lived there then or not and her portrayal of a family from Dublin's poorer district's is totally authentic. I don't live in Dublin any longer but the book transported me back so well I could even smell the hops from the Guinness factory. Well done Tana, more please.

I found this book compulsive from the opening sentence onwards, to the very last page. I have read one of her other books, 'The Likeness' which was strong on many levels, but this gripped far more than that book did, much as I enjoyed the way French played with the idea of doubles in 'The Likeness'. 'Divorced Cop' is a cliche, what French does is turn the cliche inside out so that the first murder is the catalyst for a much bigger story, told in retrospect, about how a deeply unhappy family might contribute to the potential for divorce and estrangement, never mind the motivation for becoming a policeman, and how the unhappy family background and police work combined would strain the most committed of marraige partnerships. The portrayal of the Frank Mackey is humane-ness itself, tested by an inhumane situation.

As for predictability, some will guess who did what and when they did it fairly early in, but the point is more why they did it, which is where the compulsion comes into the reading of it. One of the reasons Greek Tragedy has lasted is because the plots are about 'why' rather than 'how' or 'when', character rather than procedural details, and those tragedies were about invoking catharsis. The family at the centre of this story, and the street on which they live, are hewn out tragedy, and have a strong sense of spiking each other's chances from before birth onwards. I am sure French kept a note book of the aggressive vernacular working class phrases which fit the Dublin she portrays, which particularly delighted me. Even now, though, I would not like to think of or count the number of expletives in the book, nor the number of seperate portrayals of domestic violence, or times when drink put reason and calm to sleep. Only once does a television get destroyed, but they are disposable anyway.

The book ends with a ragged catharsis, a rather emotionally drained potential for a fresh start is there for the taking, if the rest of Frank's life is calm enough. But of course that is all for another book.