Pun Salad

I got hooked on Tana French's series of novels circling around the Dublin Ireland Murder Squad: a group of detectives charged with figuring out homicides. The primary team here is the one from the previous book: Antoinette Conway and Stephen Moran. The tale is told with Antoinette as the first-person narrator. And she's kind of a mental can of worms, thanks to the hostile sexism she perceives from her testosterone-heavy squadmates. She's got her shields on high, looking for (expecting, really) betrayal by her peers.

The current case seems pretty straightforward: the victim, Aislinn, has expired thanks to hitting her head on her fireplace. Unfortunately, the underlying cause of that was getting punched in the face. The suspect is pretty obvious: Rory, a guy Aislinn's been seeing, had a date with her on the evening of the crime. And he's got no alibi, and he's obviously hiding something. Relative newbies Antoinette and Steve are being "assisted" by veteran detective Breslin, And Breslin's anxious to arrest Rory and close the case. But does he have an ulterior motive? Aislinn's best friend seems to think there was another guy in Aislinn's life, but actual evidence for his existence is difficult to find.

This is really my favorite Tana French book so far. She's an uncommonly gifted writer, especially in the parts where the first-person narrator reveals more about herself to the reader than the narrator knows about herself. And (as usual for Ms French) the Murder Squad detectives do nearly as much psychic damage to themselves as the physical damage done to the victims.