The Secret Place by Tana French
I think that this is the weakest of Tana French’s books I’ve listened to so far. That said, it’s still an amazing book with depth and nuance far beyond what the police procedural murder mystery genre requires.
Holly Mackey, who was a child in the previous book Faithful Place, brings a clue about a cold case to Steven Moran, who was also a character in Faithful Place. The murder is of a young man who was found on the grounds of the girls’ boarding school that Holly attends. Steven thinks this is his chance to prove himself and get out of cold cases and into murder. He partners with Conway, a sharp, hard woman trying to survive in the hostile boy’s club of the murder department. As with French’s other books, the conversations are deep and nuanced studies of personality. What does she want? How to I get her to talk? Is she lying? Why? The relationship between Conway and Steven is also tenuous.
The reviews of this book on audible warned that the girls’ talking got very annoying, and I agree. The teen girls are full of slang and sarcasm, and nearly every sentence begins with “OMG” or “he-LLO!” You can hear the eye-rolls in the narrator’s voice. The girls are machiavellian, cunning, and deceitful. Their world is one of brittle alliances and high stakes social games. Steven feels contempt for them, but he’s also terrified of them. Conway respects them more, but you can tell she doesn’t want anything to do with them, like she’s distancing herself from anything feminine. The contempt with which they treat the teenage girls felt very unpleasant to me, as I used to be a teenage girl.
When we get to the girls’ point of view, the language changes. The girls speak in slang and sarcasm to the cops, every sentence designed to push or pull their opinion, but when they’re talking about themselves, the depth of their inner lives contrasts startlingly with what they show adults. Becca pines for the days in which her body was appreciated for its athleticism rather than being judged as a sexual object. Holly sees her friends as a substitute for the family members she doesn’t have anymore. Julia loves to be the leader, even though she knows that the oath they make to eschew boys will have a cost. Selina falls deeply, sensuously in love, with all the pain that will eventually entail.
Like the first book In the Woods, this book has magical realism elements. Holly and her friends develop magic powers. They are silent and invisible in the night. They can leap in the air and come down as slowly as a falling leaf. They can move objects with their mind. Are these things really happening, or are they just a metaphor for what it feels like to become a teenage girl? I remember what it’s like, where one day you are a child and the next day you are one of the most coveted commodities in the world, objectified and reviled and adored and desired. It can make you feel like you have superpowers, and also that the real you is invisible inside the shell of a changing body. They want to be separate from the mating game playing out among their peers, but they are also caught up in it, because that’s how biology works. They are torn between the political spectacle of “The Court” (a shopping mall where the teens hang out) and the numinous mysticism of the cypress grove where they commune with nature.
Because the interconnected relationships of the girls are so integral to the story, I almost felt like the murder mystery was secondary. The reason why it felt weaker than the others is that Stephen and Conway are nearly hostile with each other; it was hard to root for them when they’re going out of their way to be manipulative and unlikeable. I still rooted for them. Neither of them is as horrid as Frank Mackey, the series’ worst person. Also, the interminable interviews about who had access to the common room, who snuck out, who kissed who, blah blah, got tedious. Still, Tana French’s weakest book is still light years ahead of many others.
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