⋙ PDF Free The Likeness A Novel Tana French 9780670018864 Books

The Likeness A Novel Tana French 9780670018864 Books

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The Likeness A Novel Tana French 9780670018864 Books

This book started out as maybe a two-star read if I were feeling generous, but as I kept turning the pages, it kept moving up the scale and, by the time I reached the denouement, I was finding it hard to put it down even for a minute or two.

My first problem with the book was that its premise is just so unbelievable. It strays from the thriller concept straight into the fantastical world of science fiction.

But as I got further and further into the plot, that ceased to bother me. The characters were so interesting that they moved the story along and built suspense until it finally reached the breaking point.

That unbelievable premise, briefly, is this: Cassie Maddox, one of the detectives on the Dublin Murder Squad that we met in Into the Woods, has now moved on to Domestic Violence after the debacle of the Woods case. Her beloved but now estranged partner, Rob Ryan, was moved into a desk job.

Even before she worked on the Murder Squad, Cassie had worked in the Undercover division. While there, she and her boss has created a persona for her called Alexandra (Lexie) Madison and she had worked undercover using that name.

Now, Cassie is called to the scene of a murder in the countryside outside of Dublin where she finds Detective Sam O'Neill, another of her former colleagues on the Murder Squad and now her lover, and Frank Mackey from Undercover, the person who created Lexie Madison all those years ago.

When Cassie is shown the dead body, she is shocked to see a woman who looks very much like her. The murder victim's name, according to her ID, is Alexandra (Lexie) Madison.

It develops that this Lexie Madison was a Ph.D. candidate at the local university and she lived in a house in the countryside, near where she died, with four other Ph.D. candidates. She had lived with them for four years and they were all close friends, functioning very much as a family.

Now Lexie is dead and the police have no clues as to the identity of her murderer.

But Cassie looks SO much like Lexie that Frank Mackey, the undercover guy who has a streak of sadism, says why don't we keep her death a secret - just say she was injured - and then put Cassie in her place to play Lexie once again and flush out the murderer?

And Cassie agrees to this!

And all the four friends back at the big house, the friends who have known her for four years and know all of her quirks and habits accept her! They believe she is Lexie!

Can you see why a reader might have a problem with this?

This is a very strange and self-contained group of people who live in a very strange house and provide all of each other's needs for love and friendship and family. The group is not liked or accepted by their neighbors in the village. In fact, they are actively hated and are the victims of vandalism, graffiti, and intimidation. It's very much an us-against-them situation.

Their group provides a feeling of belonging for these outsiders and outcasts. Even Cassie/Lexie finds herself seduced by the warmth of the group. There's nothing that really transcends that feeling, and as the story progresses, we see that that is what it is really about: Paradise found and, eventually, paradise lost.

Tana French builds her story and the tension slowly and, up until late in the book, I was still very much in a quandary as to who killed Lexie. And, maybe even more importantly, who was Lexie?

In the end, all - well, most anyway - is revealed and we are left wondering what Tana French is going to titillate us with next.


Tags : The Likeness: A Novel [Tana French] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. A follow-up to <IT>In the Woods <RO>finds a traumatized detective Cassie Maddox struggling in her career and relationship with Sam O'Neill while investigating the unsettling murder of a young woman whose name matches an alias Cassie once had used as an undercover officer. 50,Tana French,The Likeness: A Novel,Viking Adult,0670018864,Thrillers - Suspense,Murder;Investigation;Fiction.,Mystery fiction.,Women detectives;Ireland;Fiction.,Fiction,Fiction - Espionage Thriller,Fiction Thrillers Suspense,Fiction-Mystery & Detective,GENERAL,General Adult,Great BritainBritish Isles,IRISH NOVEL AND SHORT STORY,Investigation,Ireland,Murder,MysterySuspense,Suspense,United States,Women detectives

The Likeness A Novel Tana French 9780670018864 Books Reviews

The story we are supposed to believe here (SPOILER) is that a woman can take the place of a nearly identical victim and fool her close friends and housemates of a few years. Even if Cassie were Lexie's biological identical twin (she's not) how would she fool Lexi's friends? My bigger problem with the book is the author's flowery prose style. French really needs to edit her work and eliminate the 'bits that readers skip.' Her style seems unsuited to the crime genre, which generally favors terse writing with a lot of action. You'll find neither here. I've read the first two books in the series, and I've had it with the author. Not my cup of tea.
“All the best undercovers have a dark thread woven into them, somewhere…When I was Lexie Madison for eight months she turned into a real person to me, a sister I lost or left behind on the way; a shadow somewhere inside me, like the shadows of vanishing twins that show up on people’s X-rays once in a blue moon. Even before she came back to find me I knew I owed her something, for being the one who lived.”

After a violent incident on a case, Cassie Maddox gives up working undercover for a desk job in the domestic violence unit. She gets pulled into a murder investigation where the victim had used one of her old undercover identities, Lexie Madison. To find the killer, Cassie agrees to impersonate the identity thief, who bears an uncanny resemblance to her. If stepping into the shoes of her doppelganger weren’t challenging enough, Cassie develops a close relationship with the enigmatic suspects, putting her future as a detective and her relationship with one of the lead investigators at risk.

THE LIKENESS unfolds slowly giving the reader time to get to know all of the key players. A quarter of the book passes before Cassie assumes the role of Lexie. French wraps up the loose ends and sets up Lexie’s boss, Frank, as the protagonist for the third book in the series. Like a fine wine, this murder mystery is to be savored.
_The Likeness_ is French's second "Dublin Murder Squad" book (In the Woods (Dublin Murder Squad, Book 1)). Unlike most books in a series, you can read them out of order (I accidentally read the fifth book first), as French focuses on a different protagonist from within the squad for each story; while there are interrelationships and connections between characters, this isn't crucial to the plot of the book.

_The Likeness_ was, in a word, tremendous. The story begins with the discovery of a body. (Typical mystery fare, that.) What makes this murder unique - and what sets the story in motion, is that the corpse issuing the alias a former undercover cop (and former member of the Dublin Murder Squad member) used on a long-concluded investigation. The name was entirely made up. What is even more unsettling, is body itself is identical to the undercover cop herself. Hence the title. In order to solve the murder, the former undercover, Casssandra Maddox, goes undercover again - as the dead woman.

While the story was a bit slow to start as French laid the foundation of the story, it gradually builds a head of steam as Cassandra slips into the life she originally created (and which was usurped by the unknown victim), literally working the investigation from the inside-out. The details of Cassandra's double (triple?) life were riveting, the suspects, motives and interactions between characters enthralling. French is a very talented writer. And while I congratulated myself on discovering the meaning of some of the clues, French still managed to trick me with the meaning behind the clues. I really enjoy it when an author outsmarts me, and French has done so twice. I can't wait to read her next work. For fans of mysteries or thrillers, this writer and this series will not disappoint.
This book started out as maybe a two-star read if I were feeling generous, but as I kept turning the pages, it kept moving up the scale and, by the time I reached the denouement, I was finding it hard to put it down even for a minute or two.

My first problem with the book was that its premise is just so unbelievable. It strays from the thriller concept straight into the fantastical world of science fiction.

But as I got further and further into the plot, that ceased to bother me. The characters were so interesting that they moved the story along and built suspense until it finally reached the breaking point.

That unbelievable premise, briefly, is this Cassie Maddox, one of the detectives on the Dublin Murder Squad that we met in Into the Woods, has now moved on to Domestic Violence after the debacle of the Woods case. Her beloved but now estranged partner, Rob Ryan, was moved into a desk job.

Even before she worked on the Murder Squad, Cassie had worked in the Undercover division. While there, she and her boss has created a persona for her called Alexandra (Lexie) Madison and she had worked undercover using that name.

Now, Cassie is called to the scene of a murder in the countryside outside of Dublin where she finds Detective Sam O'Neill, another of her former colleagues on the Murder Squad and now her lover, and Frank Mackey from Undercover, the person who created Lexie Madison all those years ago.

When Cassie is shown the dead body, she is shocked to see a woman who looks very much like her. The murder victim's name, according to her ID, is Alexandra (Lexie) Madison.

It develops that this Lexie Madison was a Ph.D. candidate at the local university and she lived in a house in the countryside, near where she died, with four other Ph.D. candidates. She had lived with them for four years and they were all close friends, functioning very much as a family.

Now Lexie is dead and the police have no clues as to the identity of her murderer.

But Cassie looks SO much like Lexie that Frank Mackey, the undercover guy who has a streak of sadism, says why don't we keep her death a secret - just say she was injured - and then put Cassie in her place to play Lexie once again and flush out the murderer?

And Cassie agrees to this!

And all the four friends back at the big house, the friends who have known her for four years and know all of her quirks and habits accept her! They believe she is Lexie!

Can you see why a reader might have a problem with this?

This is a very strange and self-contained group of people who live in a very strange house and provide all of each other's needs for love and friendship and family. The group is not liked or accepted by their neighbors in the village. In fact, they are actively hated and are the victims of vandalism, graffiti, and intimidation. It's very much an us-against-them situation.

Their group provides a feeling of belonging for these outsiders and outcasts. Even Cassie/Lexie finds herself seduced by the warmth of the group. There's nothing that really transcends that feeling, and as the story progresses, we see that that is what it is really about Paradise found and, eventually, paradise lost.

Tana French builds her story and the tension slowly and, up until late in the book, I was still very much in a quandary as to who killed Lexie. And, maybe even more importantly, who was Lexie?

In the end, all - well, most anyway - is revealed and we are left wondering what Tana French is going to titillate us with next.