Skip to main content
PBS logo
 
 

Book Review of The Trespasser (Dublin Murder Squad, Bk 6)

The Trespasser (Dublin Murder Squad, Bk 6)
maura853 avatar reviewed on + 542 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 1


When does an unreliable narrator (or perspective character) become not just unreliable, but unbearable ... ?

My track record with Tana French is going rapidly downhill: I found "In The Woods" frustrating, but intriguing. I loathed "The Likeness," and when I finished it, I felt like joining a class-action suit for compensation for the hours of my life that I lost on it. I really liked "Faithful Place," as a picture of a working-class Dublin family and its neighbours-- but ultimately thought that the mystery was a damp squib, and very disappointing.

I picked this up in a charity shop, and it's charity shops that I blame for my misguided attempts to give authors who have disappointed me just one more chance ... (I don't blame ME: I am the innocent victim here, you understand ...) I think, everyone raves about her, she must have gotten good, worked out the kinks. But no ...

You might think I would enjoy this, as Antoinette Conway shares my weakness for doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Behave like a loose cannon, and suffer the professional and personal consequences of loose-cannondom. Rinse and repeat. Refuse to be a team player, and whine endlessly about being excluded from the team ... I read enough to decide that, however obnoxious and laddish her colleagues on the Murder Squad might be, a) what did she expect when aspiring to be part of the Murder Squad, colleagues with the temperaments and manners of Trappist monks? And b) she is herself obnoxious and self-centered enough that, however sexist her colleagues may be, perhaps just this once they have a point.