The Secret Place

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Mystery / French, Tana	4-week checkout	On Hold Shelf

" The photo on the card shows a boy who was found murdered, a year ago, on the grounds of a girls' boarding school in the leafy suburbs of Dublin. The caption says I KNOW WHO KILLED HIM. Detective Stephen Moran has been waiting for his chance to get a foot in the door of Dublin's Murder Squad--and one morning, sixteen-year-old Holly Mackey brings him this photo. "The Secret Place," a board where the girls at St. Kilda's School can pin up their secrets anonymously, is normally a mishmash of gossip and covert cruelty, but today someone has used it to reignite the stalled investigation into the murder of handsome, popular Chris Harper. Stephen joins forces with the abrasive Detective Antoinette Conway to find out who and why. But everything they discover leads them back to Holly's close-knit group of friends and their fierce enemies, a rival clique--and to the tangled web of relationships that bound all the girls to Chris Harper. Every step in their direction turns up the pressure. Antoinette Conway is already suspicious of Stephen's links to the Mackey family. St. Kilda's will go a long way to keep murder outside their walls. Holly's father, Detective Frank Mackey, is circling, ready to pounce if any of the new evidence points toward his daughter. And the private underworld of teenage girls can be more mysterious and more dangerous than either of the detectives imagined" -- from publisher's web site.

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COMMUNITY REVIEWS

Unusual and gripping submitted by eapearce on December 8, 2014, 2:27pm I don't typically read mysteries, so one has to really catch my eye to get me to pick it up. The Secret Place did just that, and the story itself certainly did not disappoint. Set in an Irish boarding school, the book flips back and forth in time between the months leading up to the murder of one of the students and the present day, a year later, when two detectives have pounced on a new lead in the case. Readers always know just a tiny bit more about the events surrounding the murder than do Detectives Conway and Moran, but the twisted truth behind the murder explodes out only at the very end of the story. Although I sometimes found the drama and pettiness between the two rival groups of girls that the book focused on tedious, author Tana French certainly manages to capture the intensity and emotion of teenage life in a powerful way. I sincerely enjoyed the apparent truths about the girls that were progressively shattered as the book progressed. A bonus, fun aspect of this book was the wonderful Irish slang used by all the characters! Fans of Gone Girl and other twisted mysteries should give The Secret Place a shot.

Death at Private Girl's School submitted by mandevil on February 1, 2019, 10:25am Takes you right inside the angst and loyalty among the young protagonists. A classic who done it. Keeps you guessing right until the end. Conway and Moran begin their partnership. Told from Moran's perspective.

Stays with you submitted by apisoni on June 21, 2019, 8:29pm This book is excellent and stays with you for a long time. The characters are deeply developed and the story is gripping both as a mystery and psychological case study. Highly recommend it.

Good detective novel submitted by jacks404 on June 26, 2019, 7:03pm Really made me want to be a detective

twist and fray and merge submitted by camelsamba on August 28, 2020, 4:18pm I like the way this story was told. The chapters alternate between times and points of view. The detectives are operating in the present, in a single day. The girls are flowing through a couple of years. The story unwinds and twists and frays and comes together. I have no idea if the chain of reasoning the detectives use is reasonable, but it was fascinating to follow (especially as it does not directly line up with the girls' POV). I listened to the audiobook version, where the alternating chapters have different narrators. Some of the language is beautifully descriptive - if i were reading a print edition, I'm sure I would have lingered over some paragraphs (and gone back to check elements of the plot).

YA setting, Adult Read submitted by amandaberry on June 12, 2021, 3:03pm This is a tautly wound who-done-it with riveting characters, excellent creepy atmosphere and engrossing narrative form. We go between 1 day of detectives frantically working a cold case and the whole school year leading up to the death of a teen. It might seem like a slow timeline, but the plot ends up careening toward a terrific ending. I love all her books, but this one might be the best.