The Trespasser: A Novel (Dublin Murder Squad Book 6)

4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars | 22,198 ratings

Price: 1.99

Last update: 08-16-2024


About this item

The New York Times bestselling novel by Tana French, author of the forthcoming novel The Hunter, is “required reading for anyone who appreciates tough, unflinching intelligence and ingenious plotting” (The New York Times). She “inspires cultic devotion in readers” (The New Yorker) and is “the most important crime novelist to emerge in the past 10 years” (The Washington Post).

“Atmospheric and unputdownable.” —People 


In bestselling author Tana French’s newest “tour de force” (The New York Times), being on the Murder Squad is nothing like Detective Antoinette Conway dreamed it would be. Her partner, Stephen Moran, is the only person who seems glad she’s there. The rest of her working life is a stream of thankless cases, vicious pranks, and harassment. Antoinette is savagely tough, but she’s getting close to the breaking point. 
 
Their new case looks like yet another by-the-numbers lovers’ quarrel gone bad. Aislinn Murray is blond, pretty, groomed-to-a-shine, and dead in her catalog-perfect living room, next to a table set for a romantic dinner. There’s nothing unusual about her—except that Antoinette’s seen her somewhere before.
 
And that her death won’t stay in its neat by-numbers box. Other detectives are trying to push Antoinette and Steve into arresting Aislinn’s boyfriend, fast. There’s a shadowy figure at the end of Antoinetteʼs road. Aislinnʼs friend is hinting that she knew Aislinn was in danger. And everything they find out about Aislinn takes her further from the glossy, passive doll she seemed to be.
 
Antoinette knows the harassment has turned her paranoid, but she can’t tell just how far gone she is. Is this case another step in the campaign to force her off the squad, or are there darker currents flowing beneath its polished surface?

Top reviews from the United States

Smokey
5.0 out of 5 stars Another Nearly Perfect Novel by Tana Frence
Reviewed in the United States on October 6, 2016
Just as two of Dublin Murder Squad’s detectives, Antoinette Conway and Steve Moran, are about to go off of night duty, their supervisor assigns them a new murder case, an apparent domestic. Conway and Moran are less than thrilled about the assignment. Although they are to be the lead detectives in charge of the investigation, the solution to most domestics is usually obvious and requires little skill. After they are ordered to include a smug veteran squad detective, Breslin, on their team, they are even less enthusiastic.

But in the beginning stages of their investigation, the detectives sense something is not quite right, and that the obvious killer, the victim’s new boyfriend, may be innocent of the crime. Fighting Breslin, prejudices, the press, and their own demons, the two struggle to find the solution to Aislinn Murray’s murder.

French uses Conway as the first person narrator of the novel. The character is so mistrustful, so defensive, and so quick to jump to conclusions, the book is sometimes difficult to read, and Conway sometimes hard to like. I felt for her, yet grew impatient with her at times, and her perspective on her job, on other people, and on her life made it hard to determine what was actually true and what was not. This made The Trespasser a great, interesting and intricate read (and I loved it). The characters are finely and complexly drawn, the plot moves along in spite of Conway’s paranoia, and the twists and turns kept me guessing as to the solution. The novel challenged me to think, not only about the solution to the murder, but also about the complexity of what makes people into what they are, loyalty, and shades of right and wrong.

It isn’t necessary to read the previous books in French’s murder squad novels to enjoy The Trespasser, but you are missing some excellent novels if you don’t.
bookworm
4.0 out of 5 stars Another great read from Tana French
Reviewed in the United States on November 21, 2016
I love Tana French. She's among the few to blow past the police procedural/mystery genre and create genuinely complex stories of literary merit. Her command of Irish idiom infuses the dialogue with a level of realism that's rare in my experience. Her characters, particularly the women, are fascinating, usually damaged, but intelligent, highly competent, confident and self-reflective. It's a pleasure to get to know them even when you find them maddening.

All that said, her newest novel doesn't compare to Faithful Place, which remains my all-time favorite for plot, character and mood. Still, this is a highly readable story that plays with the convention of the police procedural in interesting and playful ways. The title, for me, was the ultimate metaphor -- there were literal trespassers in the novel but more to the point, psychological trespassers in the form of the demons that play with our minds and bend reality. The greatest damage in the novel is the damage one does to oneself. This was true for both the murder victim, a woman unable to put her past behind her and who gets caught up in a story of her own making, and Antoinette, the murder squad lead who's tough as nails and yet can't see through or past her own fears and paranoia. What also binds the two women -- victim and cop -- are missing fathers. One can't get past that and the other doesn't want to (their reactions are polar opposites). The novel is also about the stories we tell ourselves (trespassing into our own lives??) and the danger of letting those stories take on a life of their own.

As with all French novels, the psychological edge is strong; here it was more straightforward than in some of the earlier books, but also sometimes irritating. You want to shake these characters and tell them to just get on with it. Ainsley, the victim, essentially remakes herself to take revenge on a man who she feels stole her past and her life -- the ultimate trespass. For me, this obsession, which ends in her murder, was perhaps the weakest link. And yet, although I couldn't quite fully believe she could lose herself in her obsession so completely, the narrative thrust and characters pulled me along. And our "heroine," Antoinette, on the other hand, does come to terms with her story, and her failings, emerging as a stronger and more grounded woman. French, who likes ambiguity, went with a more positive and clearer ending here and it worked well for the book. Can't wait to see where French goes with the next one and I hope the wait won't be too long.

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