The Secret Place

In an expensive private girls’ school, one day a photo appears on the bulletin board: a smiling boy from a neighboring boys’ school. Over the boy’s face, there’s text cut out from letters: “I KNOW WHO KILLED HIM.”

Chris was murdered almost a year ago; his body was found on the idyllic lawn of the girls’ school. How did he get there? Who did he date? Who is the killer? All these questions remained unanswered.

Until one day a girl arrives at the police station and hands detective Steven Moran this photo with the inscription. Steven is not waiting for his chance for the first year—he has been waiting to get into the Dublin Police Department’s Murder Unit. And this chance has somehow come to him. Together with Antoinette Conroy, the Murder Unit’s infamous tough woman, he goes to St. Kilda’s School to investigate. They don’t realize that they’ll end up in a real hornet’s nest—where young girls, so innocent and sweet in appearance, are actually more dangerous than the worst criminals. Smarter, more cunning, more lying—definitely.

Tana French’s new detective novel—whose tag has become “the Irish Donna Tartt”—is a big psychological novel built on an excellent detective framework. It’s at once a psychological drama, a coming-of-age novel, and, of course, a classic detective story with a closed circle of suspects unfolding in the strange world of a private school.