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The Trespasser

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Member Reviews

Thanks so much to the publisher and to NetGalley for giving me access to this book. Tana French writes a great psychological thriller. I will be recommending this book. Thanks again for letting have a chance to read it.

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Part of the Dublin Murder Squad series, The Trespasser can (like all of this series) be read as a standalone (or in any order). This packs the usual atmospheric, moody punch of French's always-great mystery novels; not to be missed for any fan of suspense, murder, police procedurals, intrigue, or Irish lore.

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Irish writer, Tana French, is one of my favorite crime writers. She combines crime fiction with literary fiction. And each book she writes has an original story line. Antoinette Conway and Stephen Moran are the newbies on the murder squad. Antoinette has suffered great harassment from the male detectives, who don’t appreciate an intelligent female being brought on board. She and Steven end up with the late shift and end up with what looks like a murder that should be a quick closed case of domestic violence. But the pieces aren’t fitting as well as they should, and their investigation turns into a much more sinister investigation.

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Thank you for the chance to review this book, however, unfortunately, I was unable to download this title before it was archived

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Tana French can write a mystery! This is a classic murder mystery with all the appropriate twists and turns one expects from French's novels. There's a crusty cop, a dead girl, and (maybe) dirty cops. By the end it's all sorted out, even the personal issues among the characters. Although I sometimes found it difficult to understand because of the plethora of Irish slang, most of the time the context made the meaning clear. All that local color gave the story some personality. Love a good mystery? Read this one.

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Antoinette Conway knows her place on her squad; as the only woman, she faces a lot of grief every day that she goes in to work. Most days, Conway keeps her head down, focuses on her work, and depends on her partner to help her through.

A seemingly simple domestic violence murder changes everything though. From the outside, Aislinn Murray seems like pretty uncomplicated. She's beautiful, keeps her house immaculate, and has a dorky boyfriend. Who would want to kill her? From the moment that she is assigned the case, Conway has a feeling that there might be something more to it than what appears from the outside.

Will she be able to unravel things before it's too late?

I really really love this series. I love how French continues the series, but uses a different narrator each time. It keeps the series fresh, and always leaves me guessing who will be the next narrator. I highly recommend this series to readers that enjoy a suspenseful and dark mystery.

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Tana French has outdone herself once again. Each one of her books is utterly un-put-downable, the most recent surpassing its predecessors. The sophisticated, riveting plot made me hope for a long wait at the doctor's office and caused me hours of sleep deprivation. This author never, ever disappoints! I recommend wholeheartedly.

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I am a big fan of Tana French. Her best novels are Into the Woods and The Likeness. She is an Irish writer and her novels take place in Ireland so one needs to remember that the setting and characters are Irish. The Trespasser is an interesting detective novel; not as mesmerizing as some of her others but it has that psychological edge to it as do all of hers. Her novels loosely follow each other as they feature different characters from the older stories. Tana French has a talent for character development. Her characters are complex; with flaws and strengths. She makes it so easy to get to know each one and feel their emotions. The plot is also complex and has many twists. If you haven't read her earlier work - do so - you won't be disappointed!

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Another excellent mystery by Tana French! Although the tests and turns keep you guessing throughout the book ( and long past ones usual bedtime), the author's real genius is in her complex , and often deeply flawed, main characters. I love how her protagonists are developed from a minor characters in previous books.

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Oh my! So creepy but oh so good! Cannot wait for the next one in the series

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Hands down one of the best books I read in 2016, and my favorite so far in the Dublin Murder Squad series. Antoinette Conway, an outsider among the murder squad who is being anonymously harassed is handed a cut and dry domestic murder case. The details soon don't add up, and she digs deeper and further into the murder investigation, uncovering a truth that will blow the murder squad apart.

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I did not read this book as it was part of a series and since I did not start this series I preferred not to read it.

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Perhaps it’s a byproduct of the violence of American society, but too often in thrillers, both in cinema and in books, writers feel that they can only transfix and hold our attention by a steady escalation in violence and an ever-higher body count. When characters are made of straw it’s all too easy to mow them down like such, and no-one pays any mind. In The Trespasser Tana French does the opposite, and reminds us, with depth and care, that one life has enormous meaning, and that one death can resonate with surprising circumstances and broad effect.

The Trespasser is set in the Dublin Murder Squad, and features Detective Antoinette Conway, for whom, like many police, feel that the Murder Squad is the peak of their profession. Conway is a woman in a man’s world, and as smart and aggressive as she is, her time in the Murder Squad has been nothing but an endless series of pranks, insults and harassment that makes her believe that any day may be her last. In this atmosphere Conway ends up as the lead on her first big case, along with her partner, Stephen Moran, and both are almost disappointed that the case seems like a simple domestic dispute gone wrong. A young woman named Aislinn Murray is found dead in her home, seemingly from a blow to the head. A dinner for two is set on the table, and she appeared to have a date with a bookstore owner named Rory Fallon. On the surface it seems simple, but one after another of the obvious hypotheses falls apart. Other members of the squad, especially the menacing Breslin, seem unusually eager to nail Fallon, and the victim, Aislinn, is familiar to Conway, but the detective cannot remember from where. Once she digs into her past Conway finds an iron will masked beneath an almost cliched version of femininity.

This depth is one of Ms. French’s greatest strengths. It’s not that difficult for a skilled plotter to create twists and turns, but it takes an expert to make them both surprising and inevitable, and here the author does it again and again. Just when I thought I could see where things were going a small turn would catch me unawares; such as the similarities between Conway’s past and Aislinn’s. At first the two women really seem as different as night and day, but the eventual parallels between them rise from circumstance naturally, with nuance and care, and never once feels forced or fake.

Character is another place where Ms. French shines. All of the characters have depth and insight, but also a certain distance that Ms. French uses to keep us on our heels. Even Conway, who narrates the book, and whose point of view informs us, remains a bit of a mystery. The parts of Conway that we do see , and her first-person voice ,help bring a brisk and unstinting energy to the book. The detective’s voice seems unstudied and casual, but Ms. French wrings great nuance from it. I found it particularly effective when read aloud, a test that many novels do not pass.
Brash, fearless, and smart, Conway brings an exuberance to the process of being a cop, particularly during the interrogation scenes, that make us feel for her plight without ever making us feel pity for the way her squad treats her. It seems shameful enough to deprive someone who does her job with as much passion as Conway that Ms. French can keep her as abrasive as she wants, and made Conway even more real than ever. That kind of forthright intelligence kept me from making any assumptions about where this book was headed,until the very end, which as I said earlier , is both surprising, and in a way, inevitable. That is about all you can ask from a thriller, and The Trespasser delivers.

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I've read every one of French's twisty, beautifully-plotted Dublin Murder Squad mysteries and have never been disappointed! The Trespasser, told from the point of view of female detective Antoinette Conway, is terrific.

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This book was not exciting at all. Detective Antoinette Conway was extremely annoying. The "badass" female character went too far into being her thinking she was just "better than all of the guys" and "too tough to care about anything." The mystery was terribly written, the detective grasping straws and inventing solutions out of thin air. I never felt like I really wanted to know what was going to happen. I was never engrossed. There was too much going on, and then by the time the murderer was revealed, there was too much of the book left to really care how it was going to end.

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Excellent mystery, loved the setting and the characters. French has a new fan and now I will go back to read the other novels. I only wonder how I missed her!

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Tana French’s Dublin Murder Squad is a consistently well-written and entertaining psychological suspense series. The latest entry, The Trespasser, is another winner. While not my personal favorite in the series, it is nevertheless a terrific read with French’s trademark plot twists and deep delving into the minds of both the victims and the cops who investigate the crimes.

Since the first book in the series, French has taken a secondary figure from an earlier book and made them the lead in the next one. The Trespasser is told from the perspective of Antoinette Conway, the lone female detective on the murder squad. Along with her partner, Stephen Moran, they are called in to investigate what looks to be a routine domestic incident that led to the death of a young woman, Aislinn Murray. It wouldn’t be much of a story if it were actually a routine incident, so of course it is not.

The boyfriend is an obvious suspect, but Conway sees an unusual amount of secrets in the victim’s life, and finds the pressure from within the squad to make a quick arrest of the boyfriend likewise suspicious. Complicating matters is the harassment Conway routinely receives from her own squad. This causes her to suspect that she may be being misled so that she will make a mistake which will lead to her either quitting or being fired. But is the mistake acting too quickly or not acting quickly enough with an obvious suspect in front of her?

In the first part of the story, we learn of the possible presence of a “mystery man” in Aislinn’s life. The evidence is scant enough that it’s possible he doesn’t exist. This fuels Conway’s paranoia. At various points she begins to suspect everyone on the murder squad to be out to get her, even coming to believe that her partner wouldn’t mind seeing her gone. It’s in this early part that I felt the story suffered a little in comparison to previous entries in the series. Conway’s introspective paranoia began to stray from legitimate grievances to self-pitying wallowing. Whether this was a result of or caused by a lot more of the novel spending time within the actual police headquarters as compared to the other books I’m not sure. The time spent focusing on Conway’s relationship with the squad seemed to slow what we were learning about Aislinn’s life to a trickle.

The story picks up the pace at about the halfway point and we begin to see more solid evidence of there being more to Aislinn than meets the eye. Some of the most entertaining parts of French’s books are the investigatory dead ends that rather than being throwaways, are part of the sifting and winnowing that allows the true story to emerge and lead to the solving of the crime. Likewise, there is a jumping back and forth in time, as events in the victim’s past shine a light on the crime in the present.

As Conway and Moran close in on the murderer, not only does Aislinn as a victim come into tragic focus, but Conway gets clarity on her own place in the squad and is able to interpret events a little more realistically.

One of the things that French does best in her novels is to drive home the tragedy and pointlessness of these crimes. She also shows how events deep in the past have shaped these persons lives; victims, perpetrators and investigators. The open question is whether once started on this path, was tragedy always inevitable? French makes you care about these characters and feel the pain of the choices they made. Hope comes in the form of the lessons the detectives learn along the way and the chance that it alters their perspective enough to change their own path.

The Trespasser is another great read from French and perfect for anyone who enjoys psychological suspense. I’ll keep reading as long as she keeps writing. Highly recommended.

I was fortunate to receive an advance copy of this book.

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https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/creating-in-flow/201701/6-new-novels-unexpected-unforgettable-characters

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