The third book of Tana French is less a thriller than a bitter milieu study that is so close to the people that you do not have the feeling that the characters are too rough sketches that are only limited to their bad qualities and behaviors. Frank Mackey has broken many years ago with his family, is initially gone to England, but then returned to Ireland and is now working as an undercover investigator for the police. What tells French of the family Mackey, unfortunately bitter reality in many Irish families up in the time of economic improvements: they had many children, but does not work, the father is severely dependent on alcohol and often violent, the mother, although themselves often the victims , ignored the father's behavior, itself is often brutal to the children, and mentally. The children live in constant fear of the next outburst. Silently they hate their parents, but out of sheer habit and peer pressure the neighboring community, they remain well-behaved at home in the much too small flat and come back later as adults even regularly for Sunday lunches and other meetings over, although they are a pure torture usually because the mother complains incessantly and only the father still tends to violence. Older siblings are trying to protect the younger. And here Frank is right in the middle between two older and two younger brothers and sisters. Together with his girlfriend Rosie he wants to run away with 18 years, but Rosie does not appear at the agreed meeting point and Frank goes just decided alone to England. One day, construction workers find their luggage in an abandoned house.
What follows is not really a crime, because Frank is not involved in the official investigation, which assumes the homicide led his friend Kennedy. Instead, Frank decides to search for answers, interviewed old, who often despise him because he has managed to escape a misery in which they have not become loose. He solves unintentionally from a disaster.
Unlike in Rowling's novel in which I found the figures to be very artificial and everything is reduced to "Ugly", succeeds in French, the Irish underclass to portray authentically without revealing the sensationalism. Even the aggressive father revealed between a love for his sons, finally acts like a prisoner of addiction and violence. Franks inner rings shows again and again that he could free himself only by thinking and self-reflection of instilled behavior patterns and can. In his often slumbers the urge to be verbally abusive and violent. But since it is aware of this, it can be controlled.
A bitter, human insight into a society that lives according to their own rules and where it is considered betrayal, their own family, as bad as it may be, not to ask about everything in life.
