Jzj asked Tana French:

Secret Place:The endings were (although I love this book and only felt a little let down by this aspect!!!) so obvious to me from early on that I want to ask you: Was the whodunit-aspect not important to you in this book? and You took some risk by making the supernatural elements (light bulbs, hot and flying objects) sound real, literal. Why did this step seem necessary?

Tana French Thank you - and I'm glad you weren't too let down by guessing the endings early on! From the feedback I've been getting, not everyone guessed, so I hope it's not *too* obvious...but you're right, I'm way more itnerested in the whydunit than in the whodunit. I think the really important question about murder is what can bring a normal person, someone who doesn't enjoy inflicting harm, to the point where he or she believes that murder is necessary or even desirable.

The supernatural elements only sound real and literal (at least, I hope they do) within the girls' half of the book, the storyline that focuses on the girls - because from their perspective, all of those events are in fact absolutely real. In the detectives' half of the book, there's a perfectly rational explanation for every supernatural element, because from the detectives' perspective none of them are in any way supernatural. I was very careful to make sure that any event that's witnessed by anyone other than the four girls has a rational explanation.

The girls have made the conscious decision to refuse to allow anyone else to define their reality. That has integrity - but taken to the extreme, it also comes with danger.

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