Secret Place (French)

The Secret Place  (Dublin Murder Squad 5)
Tana French, 2014
Viking Adult
464 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780143127512


Summary
The photo on the card shows a boy who was found murdered, a year ago, on the grounds of a girls’ boarding school in the leafy suburbs of Dublin. The caption saysI KNOW WHO KILLED HIM.

Detective Stephen Moran has been waiting for his chance to get a foot in the door of Dublin’s Murder Squad—and one morning, sixteen-year-old Holly Mackey brings him this photo.

“The Secret Place,” a board where the girls at St. Kilda’s School can pin up their secrets anonymously, is normally a mishmash of gossip and covert cruelty, but today someone has used it to reignite the stalled investigation into the murder of handsome, popular Chris Harper. Stephen joins forces with the abrasive Detective Antoinette Conway to find out who and why.

But everything they discover leads them back to Holly’s close-knit group of friends and their fierce enemies, a rival clique—and to the tangled web of relationships that bound all the girls to Chris Harper. Every step in their direction turns up the pressure. Antoinette Conway is already suspicious of Stephen’s links to the Mackey family.

St. Kilda’s will go a long way to keep murder outside their walls. Holly’s father, Detective Frank Mackey, is circling, ready to pounce if any of the new evidence points toward his daughter. And the private underworld of teenage girls can be more mysterious and more dangerous than either of the detectives imagined.

The Secret Place is a powerful, haunting exploration of friendship and loyalty, and a gripping addition to the Dublin Murder Squad series. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—1973
• Where—Vermont, USA
• Education—B.A., Trinity College (Dublin)
• Awards—Edgar Award, Macavity Award, Barry Award
• Currently—lives in Dublin, Ireland


Tana French is an Irish novelist and theatrical actress. Her debut novel In the Woods (2007), a psychological mystery, won the Edgar, Anthony, Macavity, and Barry awards for best first novel. She is a liaison of the Purple Heart Theatre Company and also works in film and voiceover.

French was born in the U.S. to Elena Hvostoff-Lombardi and David French. Her father was an economist working in resource management for the developing world, and the family lived in numerous countries around the globe, including Ireland, Italy, the US, and Malawi.

French attended Trinity College, Dublin, where she was trained in acting. She ultimately settled in Ireland. Since 1990 she has lived in Dublin, which she considers home, although she also retains citizenship in the U.S. and Italy. French is married and has a daughter with her husband.

Dublin Murder Squad series
In the Woods - 2007
The Likeness - 2008
Faithful Place - 2010
Broken Harbor - 2012
The Secret Places - 2014
The Trespasser - 2016

Stand-alone mystery
The Witch Elm - 2018
(Bio adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/2/2014.)

Book Reviews
(Starred review.) [M]esmerizing.... Det. Stephen Moran...is biding his time until he can make the Murder Squad. When 16-year-old Holly Mackey, a colleague’s daughter, shows up with a clue to an old crime, Moran sees his chance.... French stealthily spins a web of teenage secrets with a very adult crime at the center.
Publishers Weekly


A year after the body of swoon-worthy Chris Harper was dumped at St. Kilda's, a girls' school in a Dublin suburb, student Holly Mackey gives Det. Stephen Moran a photo of Chris she's found with the words "I know who killed him" inscribed on the back. From the multi-award-winning and New York Times best-selling French.
Library Journal


(Starred review.) The Dublin novelist has few peers in her combination of literary stylishness and intricate, clockwork plotting.... Beyond the murder mystery, which leaves the reader in suspense throughout, the novel explores the mysteries of friendship, loyalty and betrayal, not only among adolescents, but within the police force as well. [A] meticulously crafted novel.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. What part of the author’s portrayal of adolescence rang the truest with your own experience? Of all the teenagers in the novel, which reminded you most of yourself at the age?

2. Who did you first suspect killed Chris Harper? Who did you think wrote the note? Why?

3. Detective Mackey’s sharp eye for human behavior is matched only by his determination to protect Holly. He warns Conway that Moran is ambitious, even to the point of disloyalty. Is this true?

4. Similarly, Mackey explains to Moran why Conway is so disliked by the Murder Squad. Do you believe his reasoning or is he trying to play on Moran’s fears? If you were Conway, how would you have reacted to the other detectives’ behavior?

5. There are episodes of the supernatural throughout the novel. Do you believe that Holly and her friends had magical powers? Did the students actually see Chris’s ghost? What was the dark shape that Moran noticed through the doorway?

6. The title refers to the St. Kilda’s board where the girls post their secrets, but in what other ways could it be interpreted?

7. The book’s chapters alternate between Moran and Conway’s experience solving the crime and the events leading up to the crime itself. How did this double narrative heighten your experience as a reader?

8. Moran admits, “I love beautiful; always have. I never saw why I should hate what I wish I had” (p. 31). What does he mean? Does this affect his work on the case?

9. French presents the relationship between Selena and Chris so that any of her friends’ differing perspectives on his feelings are plausible. What do Selena, Julia, Holly, and Becca each believe? Who do you agree with?

10. Would Chris Harper’s murder case have been handled differently if it had occurred in a poor Dublin neighborhood?

11. French writes that “when Holly thinks about it a long time afterwards, when things are starting to stay fixed and come into focus at last, she will think that probably there are ways you could say Marcus Wiley killed Chris Harper” (p. 95). What does she mean?
(Questions issued by the publishers.)

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