L. Rambit's Blog - Posts Tagged "dms"

Tana French's Dublin Murder Squad, a loosely connected series of six (hopefully more, eventually!) highly detailed, meticulously researched, character-driven police procedurals with the occasional supernatural slant, is fucking amazing. I'm serious; this author owns my ass. There's something here for everyone to appreciate; gorgeous prose, complex, morally gray protagonists, exciting discoveries, deliciously woven mysteries where all the pieces fall perfectly into place (sometimes at the worst possible times)... She has the brass balls to give most of these books a bittersweet or outright tragic ending. There is nothing I don't love about this series! She even owns up to the fact that most cops are corrupt, disgusting, ineffective, and more than willing to overlook their squad's crimes! They're five-stars all around from me. But which one do I love best?

########################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################

My number one favorite (but number four in the series) is Broken Harbor (or "Harbour," if you're European). It stars the seasoned, goodie two-shoes detective, Mick "Scorcher" Kennedy, whom Frank Mackey royally fucked over in #3 (you should probably read #3 before #4 for context, but you don't have to). To salvage his good name, Mick takes what looks like a straightforward case: two children smothered in their beds, Mom and Dad stabbed to pieces in the kitchen.

Unfortunately for Mick, this is the case to get to him, and not just because he's having family problems of his own. The town the murders took place in was also the same town he suffered a severe childhood trauma in, compromising his ability to see things objectively. He realizes how extremely lonely he is as a person as he studies the madness that overtook the family before their deaths. (Some readers are annoyed with this book because some things remain unexplained, which aggravates me. Stop taking every line literally! Unreliable narrator! It's supernatural, baby!!! Read between the lines!) In the end, Mick is forced to look inwards and question his beliefs on justice and his role in the legal system (aka: is the legal thing necessarily the right thing?) as he takes paths he never before would have dared.

The writing here is gorgeous. There's one particular dreamy chapter regarding a sleep-deprived Mick contemplating the ocean that left a hollow ache in my heart. What a fantastic, moving character study. I love it beyond words.

########################################################################

The Trespasser is volume six in the series; I highly recommend you read #5 before tackling this one, for an introduction to the characters and their relationships. Our star here is the brash and rude Antoinette Conway, a woman of color whom some have dubbed "a hateful bitch." (Naturally, I love her.) The murder squad has become more boys' club cliquey than ever, with the other detectives shunning her because she won't tolerate their sexist, racist bullshit. Only her partner, detective Stephen Moran, remains steadfast by her side.

Ooh, baby; Tana really snapped in this one. You can practically drink the spicy 'fuck the police' oozing between every line. Long overdue, imho. #6 takes longer to get going than the others, but it's worth the slow burn. At first it feels like Antoinette has nothing in common with the murder victim, a bland, blonde dreamer who was just making dinner for her boyfriend before the life was punched out of her. It seems straightforward enough; a romance, a stalker, love gone wrong. As things develop and we learn more about the victim, however, we see why this is the case to rock Conway's career.

But are Antoinette's misgivings against her squad valid, or unjustified paranoia? What about Stephen? Is there something rotten going on amongst the cops? And what all does it have to do with the death of this one, specific girl? Read this at your peril: it made my heart race several times. Just fantastic; left me screaming at my audiobook while driving to work.

########################################################################

#2, The Likeness ties with #3, Faithful Place, for my third favorite. They're equal in quality, but Likeness fits my personal preferences more (female narrator! Dark academia! More vague hints at a supernatural plotline!). Perhaps you should read #1 before reading #2, but in my opinion, it doesn't really matter. Our detective here is Cassie Maddox, who isn't technically a murder detective anymore, but a detective for domestic violence. Her former undercover boss, Frank Mackey, drags her undercover one last time as the murder victim in question (Alexis) happens to be the spitting image of her, and any one of the girl's university housemates may have been the killer. (This is where some readers throw up a fuss. "Surely the people who live with her could tell the difference between their Alexis and this imposter!" I beg of you, please research Celtic changelings and the concept of doppelgängers. This series is traditionally Irish to its core, and that does include subtly superstitious elements.)

Cassie fucks up by falling too deeply into her role as Alexis, becoming invested in the girl's life and relationships. As with all DMS books, this case is particularly personal for her. She's struggled all her life with identity, and so has Alexis; a serial runaway who finally met her match at the end of someone's knife. The reader, too, is thrown into this world away from worlds, where all of Alexis's friends were attempting to create a utopia to escape their own painful pasts, to live as a family together. You almost don't want Cassie to solve Alexis's murder, as solving it will burst her bubble and force her back to reality.

########################################################################

Volume three, Faithful Place, ties with #2 as my third favorite. The second I finished reading, I called my dad and demanded he read it, too, as it's so beyond his cup of tea it's not even funny. (I was right; he loved it.) Undercover boss Frank Mackey, the handsome, roguish, enigmatic charmer we've only caught glimpses of before, has a difficult life; a divorced father trying to give his little daughter Holly Mackey the happy childhood he'd never had. When he gets a call from his estranged sister demanding he return home, he realizes that his first love didn't run out on him, after all, but rather had been murdered and stuffed inside a wall for the past twenty years.

Frank is forced back into his childhood of poverty and violent parental abuse for the ugliest, most personal case of his career. He's an undercover detective, so this murder case doesn't fall within his jurisdiction, but he defies detective Mick Kennedy's commands at every turn and keeps sneaking right back in. He breaks every rule in the book, and then some, proving that Tana French isn't above making her "heroes" do heinous things while telling their story. (Among other things, Frank blackmails and coerces a young squad newbie, Stephen Moran, into doing some dirty work for him at risk of otherwise losing his career. He also threatens uninvolved civilians with violence.) (Your mileage may vary, but I'm not very forgiving of cops who don't follow rules. We see too many of those in the news every day.) The writing here was incredible as always, with an ending so intense it left me breathless. Absolutely superb; I can see why this is a fan favorite for so many.

########################################################################

Volume #5, The Secret Place, is the only one of the series to have two narrators and timelines, flashing between Frank Mackey's (now teenage) daughter, Holly Mackey, and her friends at a posh boarding school, and detective Stephen Moran, whom Frank simultaneously screwed over and helped in #3. (You should definitely read #3 before reading #5, by the way.) Holly, remembering how helpful and kind Stephen was when she was a child, comes to him with new evidence in a year-old case from the campus of her all-girl's boarding school. One year ago, the freshly murdered corpse of Chris Harper (a popular teen player with plenty of girlfriends), is found on the girl's campus, flowers in his hands and condoms in his pockets.

Stephen, ballsy and ambitious as all hell (seriously my favorite trait of his; he looks like an adorable puppy, but that boy knows what he wants and how to get it), uses this evidence on his quest to join the murder squad, hooking up with the highly unpopular leader of the case, Antoinette Conway. If they don't solve this cold case within twenty-four hours, they can both kiss their careers and dreams goodbye. Much to both their surprise, they work well together: Antoinette is bold and brash and takes no shit, while Stephen is excellent at reading people, morphing himself like a chameleon to fit whatever they want him to be. Their half of the book takes place in less than a day as they work out just what happened to Chris.

Holly's chapters take place a year prior, leading up to Chris's murder. Tana French proves she can write teenage girls just as well as she can hardened detectives... And, in fact, how they're much more brutal. She captures the intense politics of teen friendships and rivalries perfectly. These dark academia chapters are off-putting to some readers, as they're the most overtly supernatural of the series (it goes from "maybe magic" to "definitely magic" at this point), but I liked it; all of it.

Though this is the longest book of the series, surpassing the 500 page mark, there's so much going on that you don't get quite the depth of character (detective character, anyway; you get plenty of teen girl depth, but I wanted more Stephen!) that you're used to, which is why it ranks so low on my list... But I loved it for sure. It earned its five stars from me.

########################################################################

Don't hate me, Rob lovers, but... Rob Ryan annoyed the shit out of me; I'm sorry. It’s not that he’s badly written or unrealistic... He is as well crafted as all our other detectives. I just feel like, if I met him in real life, I’d be tempted to slap him. Repeatedly. In the Woods, though my least favorite of the DMS series, is the only one I've read twice (so far). I have quite a lot of notes taken on the book (link - spoilers ahoy!) to substantiate my theory on what exactly went on in Rob's past.

So: Rob Ryan (or "Adam," as he was called as a child), was involved in a mysterious, horrific crime as a child that he lost all memory of. Now an adult on the murder squad, he and his beloved partner Cassie Maddox are tasked with a case in his hometown. As Rob explains, he most hates murders involving children, and Cassie most hates ones that involve rape. Unfortunately for them, this case revolves around both; a young ballerina killed, raped (yes, in that order), and placed on a "sacrificial alter" in an archeological dig. The more Rob and Cassie search around his childhood home, the more old faces and stories Rob meets and hears, the more he's dragged down the path he'd hoped to leave behind: what happened to him when he was little?!

This is a great start to the series, showcasing Tana's oeuvre of Irish culture/history/economics and detailed character studies with a shocking ending that will either enrage readers or endear them to the absolute guts this author has. You can probably guess which category I fall under.