The Likeness by Tana French

He froze the frame on Lexie, head turned over her shoulder to say something, eyes bright and mouth half open in a smile. I looked at her, soft-edged and flickering like she might fly off the screen at any second, and I thought: I used to be like that. Sure-footed and invulnerable , up for anything that came along. Just a few months ago, I used to be like that.

"Cassie," Frank said softly. "Your call."

For what seemed like a long time, I thought about saying no. Back to DV: the standard Monday crop of the weekend's aftermath, too many bruises and high-necked sweaters and sunglasses indoors, the regulars filing charges on their boyfriends and withdrawing them by Tuesday night, Maher sitting beside me like a big pink ham in a sweater and sniggering predictably every time we pulled a case with foreign names.

If I went back there the next morning I would never leave. I knew it as solid as a fist in my stomach. This girl was like a dare, flung hard and deadly accurate straight at me: a once-off chance, and catch it if you can [...]

"Tell me this woman smoked," I said.

-The Likeness

The Likeness picks up six months after the events of In The Woods (see the previous post), and I'm going to do my best to tell you about the former without revealing too much about the latter. A bit tricky for a sequel, but here goes.

The Likeness, by Tana French, is not a particularly conventional sequel, anyway. In The Woods covered a Murder investigation led by detectives Rob Ryan and Cassie Maddox, told from Rob's point of view. Cassie tells the story of The Likeness, leaving Rob mostly out of the picture. Still recovering from the outcome of her last case in Murder, Cassie has arranged for a transfer to Domestic Violence. One day she gets called to a crime scene by Murder detective Sam O'Neill. There's a body she needs to see.

The dead girl bears an uncanny resemblance to Cassie, and they share more than that. Her college ID shows that she went by the name of Lexie Madison - the same name Cassie used when she was working undercover years earlier. Cassie's boss from undercover, Frank Mackey, is at the scene as well, and he has a crazy idea: What if the detectives pretended that Lexie had pulled through, and stuck Cassie back into her life to suss out the killer? "We've got the chance to investigate a murder from the inside," Frank says with a grin.

Cassie's resistant at first, but Frank gradually wears her down, and after feverishly studying everything from local geography to subtle body language (luckily Lexie left a cache of videos on her phone), Cassie's walking up to Whitethorn House, her new home - and possibly the home of Lexie's killer.

Lexie lived with a tightly knit group of doctoral students - Daniel, serious and aloof; skittish Justin; beautiful Rafe, with the quick temper; and warm, motherly Abby. They were each other's family. Cassie's job is to live with them for a few weeks and pick up as much as she can about who Lexie Madison really was and who might have had it in for her.

It's an unusual premise for a mystery, and though I missed Rob a bit*, I quickly became just as absorbed in The Likeness as I was with In The Woods. Like Cassie, the reader is drawn in to Lexie's weirdly close group of friends (a little Googling reveals I am not the first to see a comparison to The Secret History) and wants to know what secrets they are keeping. The undercover angle ratchets up the suspense, and the more we learn, the more dangerous the situation seems. It ends more neatly than In the Woods did, but certainly leaves the door open for further adventures with the Dublin crew. Maybe Sam will get a story? That just occurred to me, and I love the idea. Fingers crossed.

Up next: At long last, In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan. Very much looking forward to it.

*Okay, a lot - I'm very curious about what he's up to.