'The secret place' by Tana French

Growing up with Enid Blyton I dreamed of boarding school. It seemed so lovely, the structured days, the camaraderie, friendship - boarding seemed a better place than my challenging home life.

'The Secret Place' by Tana French is set in a rich girls’ boarding school. It starts at 9 am in the morning, and finishes its 513 pages around midnight the same day. In between are flashbacks, relating to the murder, portraying relationships - between the girl groups defined by their rooms, between the police officers investigating the case. If I still needed healing from my phantasy that boarding school is fun, this book has cured me from any remaining sentimentality. I had barely finished the last page and called a friend, who, I thought, had enjoyed her boarding school experience. We discussed single sex education and boarding school, its structure, challenges, the discipline, personal space and its absence - at the end of nearly three hours I’m not sure if she enjoyed her time at boarding school much. Boarding school just was, there was no other option. I’m still struggling to comprehend one of the stories she told me. Aged 13 she was disciplined with 10 weeks of not leaving the school grounds, no home visits for the crime of going for an unauthorised walk in the park with a friend from school. The educational achievement of this punishment? It did not teach her not to break rules; it taught her not to get caught. Is lying and being sneaky an educational achievement?

Tana French takes us into the boarding school. She does a fantastic job in dissecting relationships, she presents the first impression, the conversations, yet then the reader slowly finds out that hardly anything is as it seems. The main characters are two girl groups of four girls each, defined by their rooms, the dynamics within and between the groups, their attitudes towards life in general, towards fitting in and boys in particular.

Two detectives, Stephen Moran and Antoinette Conway, are tasked with solving a cold case. A year ago a golden boy of the neighbouring boys’ boarding school was found murdered in the girls’ school ground. A new clue opens the story - a card appeared with the words ‘I know who killed him’. It’s now up to the detectives to find out - who wrote this card, and who killed him? The relationship between the cops and their superiors are analysed and dissected as piercingly as the relationships between the girls. The headmistress. The teachers. Collecting and re-arranging pieces of the puzzle of the murder is intriguing. Nothing is as it seems; it’s not an action but a psychological thriller digging deep into the minds of teenage girls.

‘A Faithful Place’ was book 3 ‘The Secret Place’ book 5 of Tana French's Dublin murder series. The books are roughly connected yet stand alone books. The Secret Place's main detective, Stephen Moran, had a minor role in Faithful Place. Frank McKay, main detective in Faithful Place, appears as father of one of the girls; Holly was a child in Faithful Place, yet is now one of the main character who delivers the mysterious card ‘I know who killed him’ that opens this new enquiry.

I thoroughly enjoyed the hours I spent with ’The secret place’ and read it within a few days. Book 7 of the series waits on my bedside table to rob me of a few more hours of sleep. If you like intelligent psychological thrillers and have hours to spare (or can cope with read through nights) I highly recommend Tana French.