Why I liked The Likeness

When I was a teenager, I loved Mary Stewart's novels of "romantic suspense." One of my favorites was The Ivy Tree, whose plot turned upon plain Mary Grey's impersonation of the long-missing heiress Annabel Winslow and her attraction to the current heir to the fortune, Connor Winslow. Because I like books about Ireland and I like suspense novels, and the title (and cover!) of her first book, Into the Woods, I recently picked up Tana French's second novel, The Likeness. So I was utterly delighted, as I became engrossed in The Likeness, to be reminded of The Ivy Tree as both stories so cleverly use the question of identity to confuse not only the reader, but the heroine as well.

When we meet Cassie Maddox, of The Likeness, we quickly learn that she is a young Dublin Police detective who has recently undergone trauma and tumult in her career, and has been reassigned from the undercover division to the vice squad. Cassie had worked undercover under the created identity of Lexie Madison, University College Dublin college student from Canada. Now three years later, a young Trinity College graduate student using the identity of Lexie Madison has been found stabbed in a remote cottage outside of Dublin. The police withhold the news of the victim's death so Cassie, once again, can assume the identity of Lexie Madison. Cassie must attempt to find the real identity of the victim and investigate Lexie's four housemates, who are the prime suspects in the crime. Lexie and her housemates have been living at Whitethorn Hall, a once-splendid neo-baronial mansion, and the ancestral home of housemate Daniel. Daniel, Lexie, and the three others -- Abby, Justin, and Rafe-- had met and bonded as graduate students of literature at Trinity. Isolating themselves at remote Whitethorn Hall, the five housemates have attempted to recreate the bygone rituals and formalities of the Hall's long-gone glory days. Now Cassie must insert herself into the closed and rarified world of these unconventional students and and almost parallel universe they have created for themselves at Whitethorn Hall. As Cassie turns herself into Lexie, she becomes increasingly attracted to this alternate reality, and she struggles to maintain her personal safety and preserve her own identity.

The Likeness is a riveting hybrid of police procedural and gothic novel. Tana French has created compelling characters and back stories for Cassie, her police colleagues, Lexie, and the four housemates. Whitethorn Hall in all of its shabby grandeur and the hothouse rites and relationships of its five inhabitants creates a hypnotic spell -- not only upon Cassie -- but also upon the reader. I am looking forward to reading Ms. French's other books.