Book Review: The Trespasser

The Trespasser by Tana French


I think this is the best and strongest book in the entire excellent Dublin Murder Squad series, and the worst thing I can say about it is that I’m sad it’s over.

Conway and Moran are the main characters in this, though this time Conway’s the point of view character. She’s bristly and hard to like, though you do feel for her. She’s been harassed and bullied at work pretty much constantly since she joined, and is persona non grata around the murder squad. Moran tries to placate her, and she tries to tolerate Moran’s outlandish theories when the routine murder they’re assigned starts to smell fishy.

It wasn’t just Conway and Moran’s relationship that I enjoyed, it was also the relationship between them and the rest of the squad, and between the people involved in the murder. Even the victim seems to undergo character growth as the novel unfolds–which is pretty amazing considering she’s dead–but such a doorstop of a novel has plenty of time to shine lights into every corner.

I figured out who did it and why about 75% through the novel, which is unusual for me since I usually don’t bother to guess, but I kept enjoying Conway and Moran’s struggle to put together a case without firebombing their careers. The last 25% of the novel has a couple of unexpected twists, with one of the bad guys having more power than they expected just after they thought they’d achieved victory and one person they thought wasn’t on their side coming out with support. While I did figure out the murder plot, the nuances of the squad kept me guessing. Who’s really on Conway’s side? How deep does this go? Who is trying to take her down? Can she trust Moran? I loved the machiavellian intrigue of it all.

By the time the novel was over, I kept thinking about it for hours, as if the characters were real people and I could find out what happened to them, or what would have happened to them. It was so immersive, I had to keep reminding myself the people weren’t real. (Or maybe it’s because I listen to so many true crime podcasts that I forget that crime fiction exists too.) Still, this was a really excellent novel and I completely enjoyed it.




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