In the Woods
Published 2007
Read June 2026
The Likeness
Published 2008
Read Jun 2026
Faithful Place
Published 2010
Read July 2026
Books 1-3 of the Dublin Murder Squad series
By Tana French
This reader has enjoyed the first three books of Tana French’s Dublin Murder Squad series. The structure of this series is interesting in that although characters from the Murder Squad and other Dublin police units participate in multiple books, the protagonist, through whom the story is told is different in each book. The corresponding reader of the audiobooks also changes along with the protagonist.
In both the first and third books, the protagonist’s youth plays a substantial role in the story.
In the first book, In the Woods, Adam Robert Ryan and two friends, age twelve, go out to play as usual in the woods neighboring their development. Only Adam Robert Ryan makes it home that day. Adam Ryan is sent to a boarding school in England to escape the pressures of the situation (thus a British reader for this audiobook). Decades later our story starts when Rob Ryan, a Dublin Murder Squad member, and his partner and good friend, Cassie Maddox, are assigned to investigate the murder of a little girl whose body is found at an archeological dig site bordering the remains of those woods. Since the detective goes by “Rob” vs “Adam” no one except his partner knows this history.
In the third book, Faithful Place, the body of the long missing girlfriend of Frank Mackey, a squad leader in the Undercover Unit, is found murdered in a unit of the neighborhood in which Frank Mackey grew up and in which his parents and brother still live. Frank is not officially part of the investigation, led by Detective Mick “Scorcher” Kennedy, a Dublin Murder Squad member, but he actively investigates anyway.
In the second book, Likeness, Cassie Maddox is our protagonist. We had learned in In the Woods that prior to joining the Murder Squad and partnering with Rob Ryan, she had been in an Undercover Unit. She switched to the Murder Squad after being injured in a case. She left the Murder Squad after the case we followed in In the Woods for reasons discussed there and not here and is working in a domestic violence unit. Her boyfriend, Sam O’Neill, was part of the investigative team with Cassie and Rob Ryan in In the Woods and is still part of the Murder Squad. Their relationship complicates her desire to return to the Murder Squad. When a woman, who looks like Cassie’s twin and has adopted the identity Cassie used while undercover, is found murdered Frank Mackey, Cassie’s squad leader while in the Undercover squad, inserts himself into the case. He convinces Sam O’Neill, lead investigator on the case, and Cassie that the investigation would benefit from Cassie posing as the murdered girl under the premise that the police found her injured and she has recovered. Thus, Cassie returns to the house the dead girl had shared with three other graduate students to determine whether and how they might have been involved in the murder.
This reader finds the structure of the series interesting, the stories compelling and complex, and French’s writing stunning. This reader expects to finish this series and likely read the author’s other series.
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