Three by Tana French

There are thrillers that exist merely to thrill, and then there are thrillers that use the genre to make larger statements about history or memory or psychology. Tana French's three novels--In the Woods, The Likeness, and the forthcoming Faithful Place--exemplify the latter type of thriller. One of the characters in The Likeness comments that there is a Spanish proverb that, roughly paraphrased, goes something like "God says, take what you like, but pay the price." He observes that modern individuals have forgotten the second part of that proverb. All three of French's novels might be seen as illustrations of what happens when individuals come face to face with that second part.

French links her novels very subtly: all are stories of the fictional "Dublin Murder Squad," and all have some overlap in terms of characters, but the overlap is slight and not always immediately apparent. In the Woods chronicles an investigation by detective Rob Ryan and his partner Cassie Maddox. The Likeness is about Maddox herself and an undercover investigation she undertakes several years later. Faithful Place, likewise, is about the life history of Frank Mackie, the man supervising Maddox's undercover operation. These connections give the three novels a fascinating continuity without confining French to the limitations of any one character or set of characters.

In the Woods offers a double mystery: twenty years ago three children disappeared. Only one of them was ever found, and he has no memory of what happened. Twenty years later, Rob Ryan, the found boy, is a member of the Dublin Murder Squad. When the body of a young girl is found in the woods, he sees the case as his opportunity to solve both the current crime and the mystery of his past. the best aspect of In the Woods is Ryan's relationship with his partner, Cassie Maddox. Their banter captures a friendship at its height and is utterly believable. The tragedy of the novel is that Ryan is willing to sacrifice everything, from his professional credibility to his relationship with Maddox to his opportunity to solve the crime at hand, in order to chase the demons of his past and try to solve a mystery that, French suggests, may not be--or should not be--solvable.

In The Likeness Maddox is thrust into what almost seems to be a parallel universe when a young woman who looks just like her and has assumed an identity that Maddox herself used as an undercover operative shows up stabbed to death. At Frank Mackie's behest Maddox infiltrates the young woman's life in an attempt to find the killer. This entails inserting herself into a group of five graduate students who have created a makeshift family in an inherited house. As in In the Woods, the relationship between the students is the most beautifully crafted element of French's novel. Their interactions and banter are profoundly appealing, the reader, and to Maddox, who relaxes in their company so far that she doesn't necessarily understand the extraordinary sacrifices the students have made in order to create their impromptu family. When these sacrifices become apparent, however, it is clear that the students are not living in the utopia they may have hoped for and that conflict, even violence, were, and are, inevitable.

In Faithful Place French returns to themes of family in a very different way when she has the prodigal Frank Mackie return to his family in order to solve a a twenty-two-year-old mystery. Mackie grew up in a neighborhood where if you didn't work at the Guinness plant you were likely on the dole, kids slept three or four to a mattress, and alcoholic husbands beat their wives and children with impunity. Mackie's journey is about digging up the past, discovering who murdered his girlfriend twenty-two years earlier, and coming to grips with his own role in and responsibilities to his dysfunctional family. French is at her absolute best when she is showing that individuals are frequently neither as guilty nor as innocent as they initially appear. This is particularly the case when the tells the same story from two different perspectives, as when the younger Mackie sons remember with horror a night they spent locked in the basement of a nearby derelict house, while the older Mackie son explains that he (at eight years old) chose to lock them in that basement to protect them from their drunken, knife-wielding father.

There are legitimate mysteries in French's thrillers, but more often than not the true mysteries are about psychology, emotion, and memory. Family features prominently as a theme, although in very different ways. The students in The Likeness make a pact they call "no pasts" not to bring their pasts into their new family structure. In their attempt to form a new family, they try to recreate themselves as blank slates. As Frank Mackie well knows, that attempt is destined to fail. Just like you can't escape paying God his due, you can't escape your past. Faithful Place is about what happens when all of the members of the Mackie family start to realize that. French knows that no matter how hard we try to deny them, our pasts have a sneaky way of creeping into our everyday lives. She is a true student of William Faukner's adage, "the past isn't dead--it's not even past."