Investigators Mick Kennedy is called to a multiple murder in a bleak housing estate. Only one person survived. Told in first-person form, the reader looks henceforth in Kennedy's thoughts. Together with him, the reader learns the whole story, from the moment when the investigators get a first overview of the scene. Again succeeds Tana French, to captivate the reader with a terrific constructed story, she writes relentlessly interesting to see what is just enhanced by this timeline; the reader knows as much as the officials. Slowly, inexorably, the information build into a coherent picture, and Tana French's skillfully interwoven threads are time friendships childhood, the European real estate bubble and the ensuing economic crisis, the self-esteem of an unemployed man and the laboriously maintained facade of family life. Tana French plays with the expectations and needs of the reader, at the same time the pedantic, always correct determination director Kennedy may indeed all options only in so far as to consider whether they are plausible, and this balancing act copes the author masterfully. For this, the meticulously researched investigative techniques and procedures, the long uncertainty about the surviving family member and the credible, interesting characters (the survivors and neighbors, Kennedy's sister !, and very disturbing: the family man): this crime is just great. And as always in Tana French's legendary stories there is a Link to the Past, but Kennedy knows the area of childhood, when he spent with his family, the holiday here. Of course, and you can only admire that this additional element, the story is not overloaded, on the contrary, there is also from this period still unanswered questions for the private man Mick Kennedy and his sister, whose status and living conditions are described oppressively realistic. You can see the mysteries of Tana French therefore also read from another point: she writes stories that you can also read in many years, if you want to get an idea of the sense of life and self-image of people in a given time period.
