Faithful Place, By: Tana French

Title: Faithful Place
Year Published: 2010
Length: 416 pages
Setting: The Liberties (inner city), Dublin
Format(s): print and digital
Series? Yes but can standalone
Book Source: Bought this myself

I finished Faithful Place, Tana French’s third book, late Wednesday night. It’s apart of the loosely connected Murder Squad series. The protagonist is sometimes a minor character from a earlier book narrated in first person. In this case, it’s Frank Mackey, an undercover detective first introduced in The Likeness. Faithful Place is a better novel I thought in that the author shows the devastating effects a crime has on a family. If you read In the Woods and wasn’t impressed, Faithful Place is a solidly written story with a better ending. So I wouldn’t write her off. The author’s strengths lie in her settings, dialogue, atmosphere and creating realistic characters. Faithful Place is a suspenseful psychological thriller / detective story that will take you into the dark, secret places of a dysfunctional family within a tightly connected inner city community. I could have finished this book in one sitting. It was that good but work and life got in the way.

This is a very contemplative novel about secrets, family obligation, family dynamics with the underlying social and economic disparity within a community. To quote Michael Connelly, “the examination of a crime is an examination of society” and the author does just that, she delves beneath the surface and gets deep inside the community of Faithful Place to unearth deeply buried secrets and hidden desires that winds up having deadly consequences for those involved.

Francis “Frank” Mackey (see The Likeness) grew up in The Liberties. He resents his family and hasn’t spoken to them in 22 years. When we meet the Mackey’s, we understand why. As a teen, Frank was a wild kid. He grew up at the Place, destined to work in the factory like everybody else in the neighborhood. Frank grew up dirt poor with the family struggling and living on top of each other. His father was an out of work drunk who beat his mother and his four siblings . Often having public disputes shaming the family. Mackey left the Place and became a Guard. When he’s introduced, he’s a divorced father with a nine-year old daughter, who stays with him on the weekends.

Frank is a likeable guy who chain smokes and likes to be gruff & intimidating. He can be charming but like his father he has a mean temper. He can be infuriating at times and he doesn’t give a damn about playing by the rules. His family reaches out to him when a battered suitcase is found stuck in a chimney in the derelict building of Number 16 Faithful Place. The building was condemned but became a regular hangout for teens. The owner of the suitcase is said to belong Rosie Daly and inside is her birth certificate and ferry tickets. She was Frank’s first love. The one who got him out of Faithful Place. The past comes flooding back and Frank shares his memories of her throughout the story.

In 1985, the two teens had planned a midnight rendezvous. They were going to elope and run away together to England to start a new life. Their plans never panned out. Frank waited till morning for Rosie but she never showed. Frank left thinking that Rosie dumped him and that she left without him. Rosie’s father never cared for Frank and he made the teens break if off. But they continued to see each other secretly and make plans. Frank’s never looked back since he left the Place. Now that her suitcase has resurfaced, he has to come back home to face his family and find a killer.

As much as this is a murder mystery, this is also about Frank reconnecting with his bickering family. We get to know the Mackey’s very well. Their scenes stood out the most in this story. Frank’s close to no one save Jackie, his baby sister. For the past 22 years he’d blamed his family for Rosie’s leaving him because of their constant fights and public brawls but now that has all changed.

Frank doesn’t want his daughter, Holly, to ever meet them and is adamant about them never being apart of her life. He is a fiercely protective father who can get riled up pretty quick about the influence of pop culture on his daughter’s values. He grew up with a father who lectured his boys about meaning of life. Often asking them, what would you die for? If a man can’t die for anything then what kind of man are you?

The best parts of the story for me are when Frank is with his family and with his siblings especially. You see immediately why he wants no part of them yet you feel sympathy for his internal conflicts and fears about his returning home. His father is on his sick-bed being taken care by his older brother Shay, who still lives in the neighborhood. His mother is a hardened old woman but still, both parents are able to evoke the fear of God into their five grown adult children. I thought the author did a good job in showing the interpersonal relationships within the family in as realistic fashion as she could. It was all believable to me.

The Mackey’s have their own secrets. Scandal regularly attached itself to them even though they try very, very hard to keep their problems out of the spotlight. The reserved manner in which they treat Frank when he returns home is because he’s a cop and plus he got out of the neighborhood. There’s a sense of longing and yearning from this community to do what he did but none of them ever could manage it or were discouraged from trying. It seems as if dreams of wanting a better life, better than that of your parents, is something to be jealous of or to be threatened by. It’s a sad situation all around.

Once the Murder Squad is called, Frank decides to take leave from work to re-acquaint himself with the old neighborhood but he’s not wanted and he is warned by the lead detective, Scorcher Kennedy, not to go anywhere near the investigation. Frank bullies a junior detective, an underling with the Murder Squad into giving him the details on the side. I felt bad for the guy at first but the author convinced me enough to accept that the guy wanted to do it after all even though he felt that it was ethically wrong. However, the two only meet a couple of times. The murder investigation is in the background as far as this story is concerned.

The mystery in here was not hard to figure out and I don’t think it was meant to be. It’s just a tragic and sad event that unfortunately shatters a family in the aftermath of it all. I had my suspicions from the start on who the killer might be and was saddened when this person confessed. The showdown at the end was all that I had expected it be and more. I did think that the scenes with Mackey’s daughter was more than I had anticipated and I didn’t care for her being involved in the way that she was but it was necessary for the plot. I felt some scenes or instances did stretch credibility for me. There were some coincidences that I felt were contrived. Still, I enjoyed reading this novel while tolerating certain elements that annoyed me.

Tana French is no doubt a talented writer. In some ways, she reminds me of Dennis Lehane where character development along with examining the community and it’s social or cultural differences is a significant part of the plot. Also, nothing is ever black or white and it’s often accompanied by moral dilemmas that will make your head hurt. The pacing is much improved than her first effort. I did have my heart in my throat for several scenes. That to me is the mark of a good mystery novel. I found Faithful Place intriguing and the ending somewhat melancholy. I’d grade this one a B+ because I did feel the ending did stretch longer than necessary (nitpicky point), the pacing was satisfactory but the biggest and strongest positive marks go to characterization, setting, dialogue and plotting. B+. The next book in the series will feature Scorcher Kennedy who was introduced in here and the title is Broken Harbour, that’s due out next summer (March 2012).

Note: According to the author, Faithful Place did exist at one time and there is no such specialized crime unit known as The Murder Squad