Review | The Trespasser shows why Tana French’s star has risen so high in the crime world firmament
French continues to buck genre conventions in her latest work, in which there’s more to a murder than meets the eye
by Tana French
Hodder & Stoughton
Dublin-based Tana French has been producing consistently good crime fiction for almost a decade. But her star seems suddenly on the rise. Clues include: several prizes across the world, sales of more than a million books as of 2015, and a profile in The New Yorker to accompany the publication of her sixth novel, The Trespasser. French is hardly prolific by modern crime fiction standards, but her care has paid off. This is not the only way she bucks her genre’s formulas. Instead of one starring role, she shifts hero/ines from book to book. She now bucks even that trend by keeping faith with Antoinette Conway and Stephen Moran, who joined forces in her previous case, The Secret Place. Here, they reprise their good cop (Moran) bad cop (Conway) routine and investigate the murder of Aislinn Murray, seemingly by her boyfriend. Race, gender and world views cross swords at almost every turn in a complex and profound novel.
