The Trespasser

French, Tana. The Trespasser. New York: Viking 2016. Print.

First Sentences:

The case comes in, or anyway it comes in to us, on a frozen dawn in the kind of closed-down January that makes you think the sun's never going to drag itself back above the horizon.. 

Me and my partner are finishing up another night shift, the kind I used to think wouldn't exist on the Murder Squad: a massive scoop of boring and a bigger one of stupid, topped off with an avalanche of paperwork.

Description:

Boy, one thing author Tana French can do is write dialogue. In many of her thriller mysteries, there is no action on every page, but there certainly are a lot of conversations. Each interchange captures the slang, twang, and insider tone of real people from specific social status, country, and region, along with their egos and levels of desperation. Certainly her newest cop mystery, The Trespasser, is another worthy example of her skill with revealing people through their thoughts and conversations.

Detective Antoinette Conway is new to the Dublin (Ireland) Murder Squad, but is a well-trained, intelligent, and capable cop ready to take on any case. But she carries a chip on her shoulder and is feisty with her fellow Squad members who haze her as a newbie. Only her partner, Steve Moran, seems halfway friendly, but she is suspicious of him as well.

A new case is dumped on Conway and Moran, a simple domestic violence/murder that left a young woman dead from a punch that caused her to hit her head on the fireplace. Of course, all suspicion falls to the boyfriend who was coming over for dinner that night. Even Breslin, the squad member assigned to help the newbies through this case, views the incident as open-and-shut.

But there is only circumstantial evidence that the boyfriend committed the crime. Lingering doubts lead Conway and Moran to explore obscure theories that only frustrate Breslin, the Chief, and the entire Squad. Was this somehow a gang killing? Maybe the victim wasn't the innocent, perfect woman her boyfriend describes. And what about the rumors of a mysterious other boyfriend mentioned by an unreliable friend? Are Conway and Moran wasting time, trying to prove themselves right and everyone else wrong, or are they just mule-headed?

To me, Tana French books always at first seem to be way too long. But while reading I can never think of even one page that contains superfluous padding that should be removed. French takes the time and care to dig into the minds of each character to slowly, slowly reveal both the personality and motivations behind every person as well as their backstories that influence who they are now. 

The story is gripping, the painstaking police procedure work fascinating, and the personalities unique and unpredictable enough that the book pages fly by. Another gem by French. Hopefully she will write more about Conway and Moran and the Dublin Murder Squad.

Happy reading. 


Fred

www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com

____________________

If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

French, Tana. Broken Harbor

Mick "Scortcher" Kennedy, star of Dublin police's Murder Squad, faces a murder case of a father and two young children in the same community that Kennedy grew up in. Seems a straightforward case with an obvious suspect, but what about all the holes in the walls and baby monitors in the scene of the crime house?.(previously reviewed here)