Thursday, May 25, 2017

The Trespasser

I confess: I'm a Dublin Murder Squad junkie.

I've had the fifth installment in Tana French's Dublin Murder Squad series sitting in my To Be Read stack for months, now, which is about as unlike me as anything, ever. I started it once the papers were turned in for the Comparative Urbanism class last week, and I'm enjoying every bit of it.

One of the things that makes French great (and she really is great, in many layers and many ways), is that she is using the police procedural as a foil for some amazing narrative work, and she does it so deftly that we barely notice. She is a master at this from the beginning; Into the Woods is as great as any other of the offerings, though my favorite so far is The Likeness, with The Secret Place  a close second.

In his analysis of the series (through book four), Tim Wirkus walks us through the slight of hand that French weaves before our eyes in the guise of a murder mystery: the epistemological investigation of information and knowing.