The Secret Place, French’s fifth Dublin Murder Squad novel, pries open the hermetically sealed world of teenagers at a tony girls’ prep school and lets readers peer into the toxic stew of hormones and homicidal rivalries roiling within ... French is exquisitely sensitive to the look and manner of mean girls: the mocking stares, the whisper campaigns, the delicate skill with which cliques eviscerate the outsider ... The Secret Place is another eerie triumph for French. By story’s end, she simultaneously makes you wistful for the galloping intensity of lost adolescence and grateful to leave the confines of St. Kilda’s with mind and body intact.
The characterization of the girls is particularly strong: all the manufactured attitude, intense loyalty, harsh judgment and vying for alpha status with a rival clique in the way that only adolescent girls can. Joanne Heffernan, a rival clique's queen bee—dealing out casual humiliation even to her acolytes and claiming virtual, if not actual, droit du seigneur over any boy she fancies—is an absolute masterpiece of vulnerable cruelty. Here...the incessant and often vicious jockeying for position is described with such appalling accuracy as to leave this reviewer practically weeping with gratitude that she is no longer a teenager. As well as divides of age and class, French handles the gender clashes superbly ... The Secret Place isn't a speed read. It's on the long side, and could have benefited from some editorial fat-trimming in places, but it's enjoyably well written and the winning combination of intricate plotting and psychological depth means that the reader's patience will be amply rewarded.
French’s fifth and least successful novel ... The novel’s emotional center is diffused, and it loses the tense, marvelous effect of French’s other books, in which the scrim of a faltering narrator makes it impossible to ascertain whether the supernatural elements are real or merely a manifestation of the detective’s psychic distress. The girls’ witchy exploits are a thin pop-culture borrowing, and teen-agers are so protean to begin with that their identity crises lack the power to unnerve.
In French’s latest, The Secret Place, the telling detail is a note—and that epitomizes both the promise and the failure of this uneven fifth outing ... French often writes beautifully, capturing the teen appeal of a boy’s 'hard-cut mouth electric with maybe kisses.' When she lets the girls speak for themselves, however, this evocative prose disappears ... The author’s goal may be realism, but the result is the opposite: flattening out these characters to the point where several minor players become nearly indistinguishable. In a novel of character, the reliance on these texts—and the resulting lack of clarity—is a serious flaw. It doesn’t kill the magic but it does slow the pace of what could have been another French triumph.
There's an ethereal quality to Tana French's seductive new mystery ... The Secret Place may be French's best novel yet and that's saying something. She's that good.
The Secret Place is brilliantly plotted with twists and turns, but...the real reason to read it is its uncanny way of plumbing the darkest depths of the human soul ... French has a knack for creating layered, multi-dimensional characters and distinctive voices that make each of her novels an event ... The Secret Place has a less procedural feel. It has a stronger sense of psychology, especially the group psychology of teenage girls, even delving into a vaguely supernatural element (luckily, nothing hinges on this—rather, it feels like mass delusion). French's portrayal of the girls is almost too-close. If you are not a teenage girl, you may experience mild irritation at the heavy distribution of 'awesomesauce' and 'totes amazeballs.' At times, I felt as if I were plopped among precocious, risk-taking teenage girls, instead of reading a carefully constructed literary mystery novel. But there is also a beauty to the art of keen mimicry, irrespective of the subject, that French has always had. It's a skill many literary novelists, so artful in their original turns of phrase, are lacking ... The Secret Place is an absorbing take on a hot subgenre by one of our most skillful suspense novelists.
Complex characters and a vivid sense of place are at the heart of French’s literary success...and although Conway and Moran are fine protagonists, it is the members of the two rival cliques, and St. Kilda’s itself, that make The Secret Place much more than just a solid whodunit. French brilliantly and plausibly channels the rebellion, conformity, inchoate longings, rages, and shared bonds, as well as Kilda’s role in fostering them.
The action takes place over a single day, but it is a full day with interviews, detection, breakdowns, breakthroughs, flashbacks, and secrets exposing the truth. Characters from previous books appear, but the work can easily stand alone ... strong character studies accompanied by nerve-wracking psychological suspense ... Highly recommended for all public libraries.
Beyond the murder mystery, which leaves the reader in suspense throughout, the novel explores the mysteries of friendship, loyalty and betrayal, not only among adolescents, but within the police force as well. Everyone is this meticulously crafted novel might be playing—or being played by—everyone else.
