Adult Book of the Month
Faithful Place by Tana French
Published by Hachette Books in 2010
In 1985, nineteen year old Frank Mackey made secret plans to escape from
Faithful Place in Dublin's inner city and run off to London with his girlfriend
Rosie Daly. There they intended to get married, get good jobs and leave
poverty and their dysfunctional families behind. But Rosie never showed
and Frank assumed she'd changed her mind and gone without him. Desperate
to escape from his alcoholic, abusive father and manipulative mother,
he left anyway and became a cop in the Garda’s Dublin undercover
unit.
Twenty years later, he gets a phone call from his youngest
sister to say that Rosie’s suitcase has been found in an abandoned
house in Faithful Place. Inside the suitcase are shreds of clothes, Rosie's
birth certificate and two long-expired ferry tickets to London.
Frank finds himself straight back in the dark tangle of relationships
he left behind. The cops working the case want him out of the way, in
case loyalty to his family and community makes him a liability. Faithful
Place wants him out because he's a detective now, and the Place has never
liked cops. Frank just wants to find out what happened to Rosie Daly and
he's willing to do whatever it takes, to himself or anyone else, to get
the job done.
‘It's not the crime, or even the solving of it, that makes this one of the best thrillers so far this year – there's no serial killer stalking Dublin's streets, no big "reveal". It's French's skills as a storyteller that make Faithful Place stand out’ Alison Flood, The Guardian
'A gripping, literate thriller laced with black humour' Irish Times
'Gripping. Tana French's third novel hooks the reader from the outset; the characters are masterfully drawn, and the author's ear for Dublin dialogue is pitch-perfect.' Irish Independent
Tana French grew up in Ireland, Italy, Malawi, and the United States, and trained as an actor at Trinity College, Dublin. She now lives in Dublin. Her previous two novels In the Woods and The Likeness landed on the New York Times bestseller list. French introduced Mackey in The Likeness as a shrewd, ever-calculating cop. Time magazine has listed Faithful Place as one of the ten best fiction books of 2010.
By the same author
In the Woods
The Likeness
