Tana French, THE TRESPASSER

Tana French has a distinctive writing style that you will either love or hate. Many love it, and I am one of them. Every gesture, every expression, and every slight alteration in tone of voice has significance, and her protagonists live in a world where deciphering these signals is essential for solving the case, and sometimes even surviving.

In this novel Detective Antoinette Conway is part of the Murder Squad in Ireland, or rather she is a barely tolerated, soon-to-be-gone member who feels she is one small slip away from being dismissed. When she and her partner, Stephen Moran, get the case of a woman murdered in what appears to be a lovers’ quarrel gone bad, it seems to be another those simple domestic cases always thrown their way. However, as they dig into the case, they find levels of complexity which lead back to Antoinette’s past and her paranoia concerning the Murder Squad.

This is an excellent book the repays the careful reading needed to absorb all the twists and turns of the plot, and the psychological dramas of those involved.