The Trespasser by Tana French is the sixth (and final?) book in the Dublin Murder Squad series. I feel like I started these books with a bit of a chip on my shoulder because the writing was so overblown for the first 75 pages of In the Woods, but I feel like I honestly did enjoy the first four books, but didn't care much for The Secret Place much at all. Let's see how this one stacks up.
Antoinette Conway has dreamed about being a detective in the Murder Squad, but the experience isn't quite like she hoped it would be. Men are pissing in her locker, stealing important paperwork for her desk, and seem to be sabotaging her work life. Since she doesn't have much of a personal life, this is not a great thing for Conway. She and her partner are assigned what looks like a garden variety domestic violence case, but with every new clue and interview, things get complicated.
Look, I like a good procedural. I like a book about an outsider coming in to shake things up. I like to read about a strong professional woman.
But I hated this book. It was interminable. It was repetitive, going over the same theories over and over again. It was, to my mind, elevating the status of police as though it is somehow *shocking* that there is police corruption. It was not good.
I think everyone should try to read the first three books of this series, but I totally understand how they might not make it through the slog of the first part of In the Woods, but the latter half of the series is just not that strong.
My reading rut continues.
2/5 stars
Lines of note:
From the outside, my gaff looks a lot like Aislinn Murray's: a one-story Victorian terraced cottage, thick-walled and low-ceilinged. It its me just about right; when I let someone stay over - which isn't often - I'm twitchy by morning, starting to feel the two us banging up against the walls. The 1901 census says back then a couple were raising eight kids in it. (page 138)
This seems about right from what I learned in How to Be a Victorian.
His writing is tiny and beautiful; it deserves fountain pen and thick yellowing paper, not this. (page 375)
My husband has tiny, cramped writing and he always uses a fountain pen. This line made me think of him and how his pens are definitely not quite right for his actual handwriting.
I have ZERO recollection of this book, to the point that I thought maybe I hadn't read it... but I have read it. Perhaps that says something about it.
ReplyDeleteIt does say a lot that you don't remember it at all.
DeleteThe only one I've read in this series is The Likeness. I liked that, but I don't have a burning desire to read any of the other ones.
ReplyDelete*sigh* I wanted to love Tana French as much as everyone else, but I didn't. Boo.
DeleteI think you should have cut your losses when you didn't like the first book in this series. You are torturing yourself by continuing to read them! I think this was the book that I liked in this series but I have only read a couple, I think.
ReplyDeleteHa! Well, it's all over now and I would have always wondered if I didn't read them, so I'm sort of glad I did.
DeleteI ont even have heard of this series...but then I rarely read trillers. Sorry this book wasnt for you. I am wondering: when you are i a reading rut do you feel like you rate books more poorly as if when on a high? I have an itching that I do this...
ReplyDeleteFor sure I am rating books lower right now than if I'd read a great book or two recently. I have wondered a lot if I had read these books at a different time with less stress if maybe they would have gotten higher ratings, but now we'll never know.
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