"The Secret Place" by Tana French, September 2014

We won this title from the Reading Agency: http://readinggroups.org./

The Secret Place is a murder mystery set in a girls’ boarding school in Dublin. It is the latest in a series of novels by Tana French involving the Dublin Murder Squad. Unlike other detective series these novels do not have the same detectives as the main protagonists (e.g. Rebus, Dalgliesh, Wexford) although characters may reappear. This time the police officers are Conway, a female murder squad detective and Moran, from the missing persons squad.

Our reading group felt that the murder mystery was not the real focus of the novel; it is about relationships. The central whodunit is a framework on which to look at how a variety of relationships work. We have Conway and Moran, both misfits in their own way, both clever and ambitious, both working class, yet so very different. It was felt that the book was at its strongest when focussing on this pair. We all liked the strong feminist aspect of Conway, a non-conformist who won’t compromise in order to fit in and be popular. The narrator is Moran and his voice was authentic, we felt French really pulled off writing as a man. By the end of the novel there is clearly genuine mutual respect between Conway and Moran and perhaps the beginnings of true friendship but refreshingly absolutely no hint of romantic involvement.

The contrast between Conway and Moran’s responses to the upper middle class surroundings of the school was also well written. Conway is prickly, she clearly dislikes many of the people there and is dismissive of their sensibilities. She bristles when having to deal with them and finds the place oppressive. Moran on the other hand finds the old building and the art on the walls beautiful and he aspires to be comfortable in that environment. French nicely inverts the usual stereotypes and we have Moran as the empathetic one and Conway as the gruff, tough cop.

Moran is approached by a schoolgirl, Holly, whom he knows from an earlier case. She brings him a message she’s spotted pinned on the eponymous “secret place”, a noticeboard in the school where the girls can express their feelings. The message says “I know who killed him” and refers to the murder of a boy in the school grounds the previous year. Conway had been the detective on that case and she and Moran go into the school to try to discover the identity of the author of the note.

There are 2 groups of friends, four in each, on whom the attention is focussed. Much of the story is told through social media and text messages and teenage dialogue. Our group was divided on how successfully this was done: how true to life was the slang? Was this just an adult’s view of how teenagers speak and behave? We felt there should have been more differentiation in the language as it seems unlikely that teenage girls intelligent enough to run rings around detectives should have such limited vocabulary. On the other hand some scenes seemed very accurate, such as hanging out in the Mall and the varied reactions to it.

At the centre of the novel are the friendships and rivalry between the girls and the groups of girls. As the story unfolds we understand that many mistakes and terrible actions were caused by a need to protect friends at all costs. While some of these may not be believable in ‘real life’ you are swept up in the story as the depth of feeling these girls have for each other is completely credible. The hermetic environment of the boarding school fuels this closeness and it is very well invoked. The evolving sexuality and sexual awareness of all the girls and the discomfort poor Moran feels around these ‘predatory’ girls was palpable.

Beyond the interaction between all the central characters, other relationships were also well depicted. Holly and her father, the tension between Holly’s parents and the effect it has on her are convincing.

There is an element of magical realism in the book which had our group divided as well. Was it necessary? If so, why not carry it through? It moved from being fairly central to the dynamic of one of the friendship groups to being dropped and not mentioned again.

Generally the response to The Secret Place was extremely positive with one reader saying it was one of the best books she’d read with the group and another buying more Tana French. Even the less favourable reactions were tempered by positive comments on some aspects. Overall a hit.