The Likeness

Starred review from May 19, 2008
Edgar-winner French blurs the boundaries between victim and cop, memory and fantasy, in this stunning sequel to her debut, In the Woods
. Det. Cassie Maddox, a dead ringer for Lexie Madison, whose body has been found on the outskirts of the Irish village of Glenskehy, agrees to masquerade as Lexie in a police effort to identify her murderer. Cassie journeys to Whitethorn House, the rambling mansion Lexie shared with four fellow Ph.D. students and tells the friends that she survived the attack. As she probes deeper into the close-knit group, Cassie finds herself becoming emotionally attached to the stoic Daniel, sensitive Justin, gadabout Rafe and dependable Abby. But as tensions rise in the house and in Glenskehy, Cassie must decide if the biggest threat comes from without or lurks within. French cleverly subverts the conventions of the locked room mystery, ratcheting up the tension at every turn with her multidimensional characters. Readers looking for a new name in psychological suspense need look no further than this powerful new Irish voice.

Starred review from July 15, 2008
Just months after the trauma of Operation Vestalthe murder investigation at the center of French's 2007 blockbuster debut and Edgar Award-winning "In the Woods"Det. Cassie Maddox is drawn from her relatively tranquil job in Domestic Violence into a case that comes to threaten her very being. A woman, a literal dead ringer for Cassie, is killed in a village near Dublin. The victim's name is Lexie Madison, an identity created specifically for Cassie in an earlier undercover operation. Police conceal the death, positing a coma and recovery, and Cassieserving as bait as she seeks the murdereronce again becomes Lexie, joining four fellow grad students living in a stately old mansion and sharing an intensely close, near-magical relationship. Acting with the reluctant approval of her boyfriend, Det. Sam O'Neill, who heads the investigation, Cassie grows to have as many questions about how Lexie lived as how she died as she sinks into her double's seductively appealing life in a search for the truth. French creates remarkably complex characters while gradually unpeeling the layers of her story in this rich and insightful psychological thriller. A stunner. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 3/15/08.]Michele Leber, Arlington, VA

Copyright 2008 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from May 1, 2008
Frenchs debut novel, In the Woods (2007), introduced Dublin Murder Squad detective Cassie Maddox and earned unanimous critical praise. Cassie is back, and French has written another winner. The body of a young woman is found in the ruins of a old stone cottage in a dying village outside of Dublin, and the dead woman and Cassie are virtual twins. Lacking suspects or leads, the victim is reported by the police to be injured but alive, leaving Cassie to step into the dead womans life as a Trinity College graduate student and the housemate of four other students. Despite the tensions of being undercover, Cassie quickly learns to love her quirky, insular housemates and her new life in a once-grand house, even as the Murder Squad investigation yields little. Someone stabbed her doppelganger to death, and Cassie must find the killer. The Likeness has everything: memorable characters, crisp dialogue, shrewd psychological insight, mounting tension, a palpable sense of place, and wonderfully evocative, painterly prose. In the Woods was an Edgar Award finalist; this one just might go one step further.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)