Antoinette puts on a brave face, but might be flawed narrator as well '“ is she being paranoid, or are her co-workers actually trying to impede her investigation? Come for the cool women and their complicated stories, stay for the hilarious descriptions of entitled men. And the victim, or what we learn of her in life, is a fascinating, twisted woman in her own right. So while her colleagues waste their time pissing in her locker, stealing her witness reports or otherwise trying to intimidate her, she can’t afford to be shaken'”she must handle her cases with the utmost, jaw-clenching seriousness.Īntoinette’s case is a seemingly routine domestic murder that, as they tend to do in great thrillers, becomes way more complex than it originally seems.

Working on the Squad is Crowley’s dream and she’s damn good at it, but she has to be 'œfour times as good' (as the writer Roxane Gay would put it) as her white male co-workers. The Trespasser, the sixth novel in the series, comes with a fresh edge: not only is protagonist Antoinette Crowley a woman (the only one on Murder Squad), she’s a mixed race woman. This allows the tone and perspective to change, even though the fast-pacing and intricate plotting remain consistent. Rather than feature the same hero over and over again, in each book a new detective takes center stage.

Tana French’s novels about the Dublin Murder Squad are among the most unique and beloved of contemporary crime fiction series.

Tana french the trespasser review