The Secret Place

A Novel

By: Tana French

Narrated by: Stephen Hogan, Lara Hutchinson

Length: 20 hrs and 35 mins

Publisher's summary

Listen to the New York Times best seller by Tana French, author of the forthcoming novel The Searcher and “the most important crime novelist to emerge in the past 10 years” (The Washington Post).

A year ago a boy was found murdered at a girlsʼ boarding school, and the case was never solved. Detective Stephen Moran has been waiting for his chance to join Dublin’s Murder Squad when 16-year-old Holly Mackey arrives in his office with a photo of the boy with the caption: “I know who killed him".

Stephen joins with Detective Antoinette Conway to reopen the case - beneath the watchful eye of Holly’s father, fellow detective Frank Mackey. With the clues leading back to Holly’s close-knit group of friends, to their rival clique, and to the tangle of relationships that bound them all to the murdered boy, the private underworld of teenage girls turns out to be more mysterious and more dangerous than the detectives imagined.

©2014 Tana French (P)2014 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

"An absolutely mesmerizing read." (Gillian Flynn)

"A book full of giddy, slangy, devious schoolgirls who cannot be trusted about anything, at least not on the first, second, third or fourth rounds of questioning.... Part of this book’s trickiness is its way of letting characters hide the truth behind the smoke screen of language and let both readers and investigators gradually figure out who is lying." (Janet Maslin, The New York Times)

"There are echoes of Leopold and Loeb and Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, but the language and landscape are unmistakably French’s, as is the way she excavates the past to illuminate the present." (O Magazine)

Pick A Narrator!!!

Story - marginal
Narration - AWFUL
Pick a narrator - both were fine but together they were awful. Like having commercials in the book - their voices just clashed
Made listening a quite unpleasant experience.

Couldn’t get beyond a few chapters

Lara Hutchinson is hard to understand. Whispery voice and doesn’t enunciate. I just couldn’t stay attentive. Would love my credit back on this one. Too bad, I love Tana French.

Excellent Listen!

Murder at a boarding school in Suburban Dublin, introduces the partnership between Moran & Conway.

A drop in quality for the series

The dialogue for the teenage girls grates at you by the end of the book, not every line from them needs to start with "Hello!".
I wasn't a fan of the continuously switching narrators

Best book yet.

This is the best so far of all the Murder Squad books I've read or listened to from Kindle or Audible. It definitely keeps you guessing. Narrators do a wonderful job.

Pace yourself

I found this book intense, deep, and engrossing. I backed up several chapters at one point, just to insure I’d gotten all the twists and turns. It requires attention.

Production was glitchy, with words being cut off or omitted. “—-pter two.” “—- —- —- the bedroom.” Frustrating, especially as there was little fluff in the writing. Distracting. No problem with the alternating POV.

A cozy afghan of a crime series

I love the weave and warp of this series. Great crime/cop drama with its own unique texture.

Fantastic characterization

The plot was a bit clunky at times, but the characters are always fully realized in a Tana French work. Loved seeing Frank, Holly, and Stephen reappear in this one.

Not the strongest in the series

I'm a fan of Tana French's writing and have listened on Audible to all but one of her novels. Her work transcends the formulaic mystery genre and has a literary bent. This novel, though, felt labored and in need of a good edit. The plot felt convoluted rather than complex with a cast of two many characters. Having said that, Tana French is skilled at evoking a sense of place. She is also skilled at drawing characters and what I love about her books is her ability to embody different characters, and here, impressively, school children. If this is your first Tana French experience, I would start with her first book Into the Woods. My favorite was Broken Harbor. I didn't read them in order until later, but it would be all the more rewarding if you did.

TERRIBLE FEMALE NARRATOR-RUINED THE BOOK FOR ME

It was hard for me to rate the story when the FEMALE narrator absolutely ruined the book, for me. She has one of those voices like on a commercial or maybe morning talk radio that you just find your self ignoring. All of a sudden I realized I wasn't listening and had to rewind, kept doing it over and over. Stephan Hogan was excellent as he was in Broken Harbor, why couldn't the author or the publicist choose the narrator from the Likeness?!

I remember being a teenager, not in the cool group of kids. I went to a private girls school though not boarding. I knew the boys at the boys school. My best friend went to a catholic boarding school and she still knows knows the school and the nuns of today-granted in the US not UK. They conduct searches of the girls rooms, would have found those phone, she feels. They are not oblivious to the newer age things the kids can get into. So I found the story a bit unbelievable in that area.

The detective part was OK. I was a bit disappointed that the pattern Ms French seemed to have going : of using one detective from the previous novel to be that main detective in the next. I thought that was an interesting pattern to have created. it kept the detectives fresh while continuing with the Dublin Murder Squad. Not that I don't enjoy 10 or 17 or 22 books all with the same lead character but I think it would be quite interesting to write-in these new detectives each new book.

So , sadly, after waiting 2 very long years for Ms French's new book- I was disappointed and couldn't wait until when I wouldn't have to hear Lara Hutchinson's voice ever again.

I have listened to the other 4 books twice and must go listen to one again just to get her voice out of head.

I must also say the very end was no surprise.