'The Secret Place' by Tana French

More of what I've come to expect from Tana French--flawless character development, tight plotting, a keen sense of place and an undercurrent of building suspense and intrigue. In this one, members of the Dublin Murder Squad (difficult Antoinette Conway, and almost-squaddie Stephen Moran) are responding to an almost-cold case of a teenager murdered at a tony private boarding school.

But because this is Tana French, things are never that easy. At the center of the mystery are four girls, close friends at a girls' boarding school, whose closeness creates a lot of angst among their peers because they seem so self-sufficient, so unconcerned with the usual things teenage girls care about--dances, and boys, and looking pretty. And it's this closeness, this self-sufficiency and their almost mystical connection that becomes the catalyst for the death of the boy at a neighboring boarding school.

Because of an anonymous tip, claiming to know who killed the boy, Conway and Moran go to the school and begin the painstaking process of interviewing the girls and their classmates, untangling the kinds of secrets and lies that only teenage girls are capable of. A great, immersive read. Literary suspense at its best.

My rating: ⭑⭑⭑⭑⭑