Well, now that was one heck of a ride. I'm not sure what to do with a crime novel where the ending of the story and the unraveling of the mystery leaves me slightly bereft. The whole point is to capture the criminal, right? This is a story filled with moral ambiguities and probably all the better for it. But what do you do when you feel sympathetic (should I be?) towards the perpetrator? I should be on the side of the victim, and I am, but in this case things aren't so clearly defined in black and white. In Faithful Place Tana French has once again managed to create not only a gripping murder mystery, but a psychologically complex tale of a family and a small neighborhood community rocked by the disappearance of someone beloved. Unfortunately I'm not going to be able to explain in any great detail why I'm feeling the way I do for fear of spoiling the story, so this is one you might want to pick up if you've either enjoyed French's previous novels or like mysteries that are at least as much about the characters as the crime, if you want to see what I mean.
Faithful Place is Frank Mackey's story. Long before he was an undercover detective he was growing up in a working class neighborhood of Dublin called Faithful Place. This is the mid-1980s and jobs are scarce and opportunities for getting out of the neighborhood are even scarcer. For some, finding work at the local Guinness plant is considered a step up the ladder and the chance at a little security. Rosie Daly's father is so close to wrangling her a position at the company, she begins to get fidgity and afraid she'll be stuck there forever. What she wants is to run away with Frank Mackey to England. Mr. Daly hates Frank Mackey and thinks of him as a waster with no potential and certainly not a romantic candidate for his daughter. It doesn't help that Frank's Da and Mr. Daly have had an ongoing feud that's lasted so long no one even knows what started it. The Mackeys are a poor family with five children and secrets they keep well hidden behind closed doors. The sort of secrets that end in bruises and crushed spirits.
So when Rosie suggests hopping the ferry across the Irish Sea to Liverpool or London, it takes Frank about ten seconds to agree with her plan. Everything is kept under tight wraps, the money is saved, the tickets are bought and they decide to meet up at the top of the hill of Faithful Place in the middle of the night and set off on their new lives together unbeknownst to either of their families. And they almost get away with it, only Rosie doesn't show. Last minute jitters? Rosie has the tickets, so after waiting hours and hours until daylight, Frank decides she's done a runner and gone without him. Maybe she's gone off with someone else or maybe she's changed her mind in consideration of Frank's dysfunctional family, but he decides to leave Faithful Place forever, too.
Twenty-two years later builders working in a long abandoned house in Faithful Place stumble across a suitcase stuffed up a fireplace. The house is all but derelict now, but it was once the stomping grounds for teens with no better place to go and young lovers looking for privacy. Frank's never been back and has long since moved on with his life. Not only has he turned completely away from the old neighborhood, but he's joined the Guards, which is probably just about the lowest thing anyone could do from somewhere like Faithful Place. It's like being a turncoat. A frenzied call from his younger sister draws him back in to his old life. He's reluctant to return, but he has to find out if the suitcase is the one Rosie was going to take with her to England. And if she left, why was the suitcase so obviously hidden away. And just where is Rosie Daly now?
Frank Mackey is a renegade. Likable in so many ways, but happy to manipulate people or the situation to get what he wants or thinks he needs. His code of conduct is questionable. You want to think it's all for the higher good, but you wonder how much is personal. He clashes, in some cases almost violently, with his family and even with his colleagues. The investigation into the disappearance of Rosie Daly, now a cold case so many years later, lands him in a state of limbo--not especially welcomed by any group involved--family, neighborhood friends, or the Murder Squad detectives. I think ultimately he's one of the good guys, but he's such a complex character there were times I really wondered.
It's so easy with French's novels to crack open the book and settle right in knowing she's going to take good care of her readers. And once again she pretty much does it all perfectly. I may not know a neighborhood like Faithful Place, but by the time I closed the book I could well imagine it and the heartache and grief that it contained. I wonder if we'll see Frank Mackey again, or if she'll move on to yet another detective in Dublin's Murder Squad?