It's Still March -- More on the Irish
Tana French's The Trespasser

I was recently with friends who, because some generations back their ancestors hailed from the green isle, are all about the Irish.  They’ve been to Ireland, celebrate every St. Patrick’s Day at a pub and have a fondness for Guinness.  So, I was surprised when I brought up Dublin writer Tana French and Jay commented that he didn’t like her and won’t read another book by her after reading one in which the murderer went free.  Fair enough.  I, however, have just finished French’s latest, The Trespasser, and my immediate response upon completion was to check the library availability for others by her that I haven’t already read.

The story is told in the voice of Antoinette Conway, a two year veteran on Dublin’s murder squad; the only woman in the 24 officer group, she is whip-smart, thorough, and tenacious, a detective with a strong closure record, yet she carries a huge chip on her shoulder to hide the sense of alienation she feels among her male peers.  The frequent victim of nasty jokes, she’s become hardened and brittle in the squad room, hating her colleagues while secretly wanting more than anything else to be one of the gang. 

As the novel begins, Antoinette and her partner Steve Moran are getting ready to come off night duty, grab some breakfast and get some sleep when they are handed a murder case.  Puzzled as to why the dayshift detectives haven’t been given the assignment, Antoinette feels further insult when a pompous, experienced older cop, Don Breslin, is charged with assisting their investigation.  The victim is a beautiful young woman, Aislin Murray, who looks like a Barbie doll.   She is found in her living room, dead apparently from a head wound when she fell into the hearth after being punched so hard in the face that her jaw is broken.  The table is set with candles and an open bottle of wine.  Dinner sits in pots and pans in the kitchen, although the stove and oven have been turned off.  There’s no evidence of forced entry and, oddly, the crime was called in the morning after it occurred.  The new boyfriend who was expected for dinner quickly becomes the main suspect and Breslin pressures Conway and Moran to arrest him, but the partners aren’t sure it all adds up and Conway racks her memory because she knows she has seen Aislin somewhere before. 

The interviews with witnesses and suspects are lengthy conversations.  In the hands of other writers, these could become tedious, but here they just feel real and it’s clear that each one is a piece of the puzzle falling into place.  The investigation keeps changing direction as Conway and Moran have to revise their theories.  Because it is told through Antoinette’s point of view, the reader is privy to her self-doubts and her fearful awareness of what it will cost her if she bungles the case.  These feelings, at times, are obstacles to her investigation, at other times, drives that propel her forward.  At one point, Breslin tells Conway that he isn’t interested in motive, that it doesn’t matter when you have evidence, but neither Conway nor French buy that argument.  The case, and indeed the novel, are as much about psychology as forensics:  the power of longing for love, the sometimes achingly palatable need to belong – these are forces that often defy reason.