Detective Antoinette Conway is on the murder squad, just like she always dreamed, but at times it is closer to a nightmare. The only woman on the squad, Conway is constantly subjected to harassment. But she keeps going, solving cases with her partner Stephen Moran, the newest addition to the squad and the only person who seems happy she's there.Conway and Moran are assigned a new case. At first it appears to be pretty cut and dry - a lover's spat going horribly wrong and ending with a young woman getting her head bashed in. They bring in the boyfriend for questioning because of course, the boyfriend, but something doesn't seem right. Something is missing. Conway and Moran insist on following up on loose ends, which seems like a reasonable and thorough way to conduct a case and yet another detective - a veteran detective at that - keeps pushing them to close the case and just arrest the boyfriend. Something is definitely up.
Tana French has written six books now for her Dublin Murder Squad series and I've read every one. What I have loved about her books, especially the last two and this one is that I feel like I'm getting a comment on something true about life or society in addition to the mystery. With Broken Harbor it was the housing crisis; with The Secret Place it was girls' friendships and how the world tries to tell girls who they should be. With The Trespasser it's sexism and harassment and the way that kind of treatment can twist a person up. Conway has good reason to distrusts her fellow detectives. People try to screw with her in ways that are not only disgusting but that potentially damage her cases, which is scary because she is a murder detective after all. Screwing up her cases means violent criminals could go free. It twists her up. Conway doesn't know who to trusts so she trusts no one, which in turn makes it that much more impossible to make friends with anyone on her squad.
It took me a little while to get into this one. The first half focused on an obvious suspect but I knew it couldn't be that easy. I kept waiting for the real story to start. Once it did, I was all in. One of the interesting things about the Dublin Murder Squad series is that each books is told from the point of view of a different detective. The last book was Moran's point of view and of course here it was Conway's. I wouldn't mind getting more books that center on these two detectives. They're a good team.
