The Likeness

Categories: Mystery & Suspense , Staff Picks , Fiction

I’m beginning to need one of those little admonitory signs, the kind you see in zoos:  Please do not feed the polar bears.  Mine would read:  Please do not recommend books to the librarian.

It’s not that I don’t love book recommendations (the polar bears would sympathize here), but I’ve been gobbling them up at an alarming rate.  And two of the most recent recommendations I received were for the second book in their respective series, which means that after I read them and adored them, I just had to go back and read the debuts, too.

I picked up Tana French’s The Likeness because one of my colleagues said it was one of her top three books of 2008.

Former undercover and homicide cop Cassie Maddox is still recovering from a traumatic case (In the Woods, the series debut) when she is called to a crime scene by both her quiet, by-the-book boyfriend, Sam (another of Dublin’s Murder Squad detectives), and her flamboyant ex-boss, Frank, from her undercover days.

When she gets to the scene, she sees why both Sam and Frank are involved. The dead woman found near a small village is her absolute double.  And what’s more, the woman was using the fake identity, Lexie Maddox, that Cassie and Frank had set up for Cassie’s undercover work just a few years before.

Who is this other Lexie, and who killed her?  Frank persuades Cassie and the reluctant Sam to put Cassie in the woman’s place to flush out the killer.  Cassie doesn’t bargain on falling in love with the woman’s life and friends.

Of course, the whole thing has to come crashing down, and it may take Cassie’s career and her relationship with Sam with it.

You’ll fall in love, too.  The details and the mystery of Lexie’s life are wonderfully intriguing, and Cassie’s balancing act as an undercover cop is suspenseful.  So are the hints of Cassie’s history that make her so vulnerable to this strange assignment. (That's partly why it’s no problem to read this second novel first.)  You won’t put this one down easily.

Tune in next week to find out what the other terrific recommendation was.  I have to pace myself or I’ll never find time to read all of these great books!