Anthony Awards Barry Awards Edgar Awards Macavity Awards *** When he was twelve years old, Adam Ryan went playing in the woods one sunny day with his two best friends. He never saw them again. Their bodies were never found, and Adam himself was discovered with his back pressed against an oak tree and his shoes filled with blood. He had no memory of what had happened. Twenty years later Adam – now using his middle name of Rob – is a detective with the Dublin police force. His colleagues don't know about his past. He works as a team with Cassie Maddox, a smart, tough cookie; they are best friends as well as partners. When the body of a young girl is found at the site of an archaeological dig, Rob and Cassie get the case. And when they reach the crime scene, Rob realises it is the exact site of his childhood trauma. They also find a hairclip that he recognises as having belonged to his friend. Could there be a connection between that old, unsolved crime and this? Knowing that he would be thrown off the case if his past were revealed, Rob takes a fateful decision to keep quiet. Rob and Cassie are investigating the murder of Katy Devlin, but they both hope that they might also solve the twenty-year-old mystery of the woods

The eagerly anticipated follow-up to the New York Times bestselling psychological thriller In the Woods Six months after the events of In the Woods, Detective Cassie Maddox is still trying to recover. She?s transferred out of the murder squad and started a relationship with Detective Sam O?Neill, but she?s too badly shaken to make a commitment to him or to her career. Then Sam calls her to the scene of his new case: a young woman found stabbed to death in a small town outside Dublin. The dead girl?s ID says her name is Lexie Madison?the identity Cassie used years ago as an undercover detective?and she looks exactly like Cassie. With no leads, no suspects, and no clue to Lexie?s real identity, Cassie?s old undercover boss, Frank Mackey, spots the opportunity of a lifetime. They can say that the stab wound wasn?t fatal and send Cassie undercover in her place to find out information that the police never would and to tempt the killer out of hiding. At first Cassie thinks the idea is crazy, but she is seduced by the prospect of working on a murder investigation again and by the idea of assuming the victim?s identity as a graduate student with a cozy group of friends. As she is drawn into Lexie?s world, Cassie realizes that the girl?s secrets run deeper than anyone imagined. Her friends are becoming suspicious, Sam has discovered a generations-old feud involving the old house the students live in, and Frank is starting to suspect that Cassie?s growing emotional involvement could put the whole investigation at risk. Another gripping psychological thriller featuring the headstrong protagonist we?ve come to love, from an author who has proven that she can deliver. *** Tana French's second novel, The Likeness, is a suspenseful and extremely enjoyable read. Like her first (Into the Woods), it is set in and around Dublin, Ireland. The story entails an investigation of a homicide (it is a mystery, after all), but it also has something more: an inquiry into the nature of human selfhood. Cassie Maddox used to be a detective on the Murder Squad but transferred to Domestic Violence (DV) about six months ago. Murder investigation is not the only thing she's left behind; she also spent time as an undercover agent. In her mid-twenties at the time, she was young enough to pass for a college student and had spent nine months posing as an undergraduate named Lexie Madison, investigating a drug ring. Unfortunately, Cassie's career as Lexie came to an abrupt end when she was stabbed. Cassie is getting ready to head to DV one day when she gets a call from her boyfriend Sam, who still works in Murder. Could she come to a crime scene, right away? Puzzled, Cassie goes to an abandoned two-room house in the rural town of Glenskehy, where a body was found. Frank Mackey, with whom she had worked on the undercover case, is there as well. Cassie is startled by what she finds: the victim could have been her twin sister. What's worse, the girl's ID says her name is Lexie Madison. Here is a mystery twice over: who killed this girl, and who is she, really? Lexie Madison never existed except as an undercover front. Whoever the girl was, she had constructed a life for herself as Lexie, a graduate student in English. With four fellow students, she shared the "big house" in town (a mansion that one of the students inherited), and judging from the videos found on her phone, they were as thick as thieves. Brought in for questioning, the four say they were together the night Lexie died and hadn't left the house. Lexie had gone on her customary nightly walk and simply never returned. Stymied in the investigation, Frank convinces first Sam and then Cassie that the only way to find out what happened is to send Cassie undercover as Lexie. It is a once-in-a-career opportunity for undercover work but very dangerous. Frank concocts a story that Lexie survived the stabbing and, now recovered from being in a coma, is returning home. They drop her off at the house, with the four friends waiting, and the perilous charade begins. Cassie must work to find out what happened without giving herself away by the things she doesn't know

The course of Frank Mackey's life was set by one defining moment when he was nineteen. The moment his girlfriend, Rosie Daly, failed to turn up for their rendezvous in Faithful Place, failed to run away with him to London as they had planned. Frank never heard from her again. Twenty years on, Frank is still in Dublin, working as an undercover cop. He's cut all ties with his dysfunctional family. Until his sister calls to say that Rosie's suitcase has been found. Frank embarks on a journey into his past that demands he reevaluate everything he believes to be true

In Broken Harbour, a ghost estate outside Dublin – half-built, half-inhabited, half-abandoned – two children and their father are dead. The mother is on her way to intensive care. Scorcher Kennedy is given the case because he is the Murder squad's star detective. At first he and his rookie partner, Richie, think this is a simple one: Pat Spain was a casualty of the recession, so he killed his children, tried to kill his wife Jenny, and finished off with himself. But there are too many inexplicable details and the evidence is pointing in two directions at once. Scorcher's personal life is tugging for his attention. Seeing the case on the news has sent his sister Dina off the rails again, and she's resurrecting something that Scorcher thought he had tightly under control: what happened to their family, one summer at Broken Harbour, back when they were children. The neat compartments of his life are breaking down, and the sudden tangle of work and family is putting both at risk…

The sensational new novel from "one of the most talented crime writers alive" ("The Washington Post") The photo on the card shows a boy who was found murdered, a year ago, on the grounds of a girls' boarding school in the leafy suburbs of Dublin. The caption saysI KNOW WHO KILLED HIM. Detective Stephen Moran has been waiting for his chance to get a foot in the door of Dublin's Murder Squad-and one morning, sixteen-year-old Holly Mackey brings him this photo. "The Secret Place," a board where the girls at St. Kilda's School can pin up their secrets anonymously, is normally a mishmash of gossip and covert cruelty, but today someone has used it to reignite the stalled investigation into the murder of handsome, popular Chris Harper. Stephen joins forces with the abrasive Detective Antoinette Conway to find out who and why. But everything they discover leads them back to Holly's close-knit group of friends and their fierce enemies, a rival clique-and to the tangled web of relationships that bound all the girls to Chris Harper. Every step in their direction turns up the pressure. Antoinette Conway is already suspicious of Stephen's links to the Mackey family. St. Kilda's will go a long way to keep murder outside their walls. Holly's father, Detective Frank Mackey, is circling, ready to pounce if any of the new evidence points toward his daughter. And the private underworld of teenage girls can be more mysterious and more dangerous than either of the detectives imagined. "The Secret Place" is a powerful, haunting exploration of friendship and loyalty, and a gripping addition to the Dublin Murder Squad series

"Atmospheric and unputdownable." – People A brilliant new novel from the New York Times bestselling author, whom Gillian Flynn calls "mesmerizing" and Stephen King calls "incandescent." 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 catalogue-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 Antoinette's road. Aislinn's 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?