MixedThe A.V Club...a book as much about the claws of family and a working-class Irish upbringing as it is about whodunit ... In Faithful Place, French gets so bogged down in her 16 houses that she forgets to put Mackey in any real danger. No one threatens him significantly, least of all himself, or the cardboard cutout of a straight-shooting detective who keeps telling him to leave it alone. If a detective is going to spend half the book raking over painful memories, those memories should do more than simply inform his investigation. Mackey doesn’t change much over the story’s course; his personal history is rewritten, but he remains stagnant. In the end, Faithful Place is a page-turner, but nothing more than a neatly wrapped mystery in an intriguing setting, more tableau than tour de force. It would be great, if only French hadn’t already proved she’s capable of more.