The Trespasser

I've been a fan of Tana French's twisted, psychological crime novels from the beginning. Her latest is perhaps her most conventional: narrated by the tightly wound, brilliant, and borderline paranoid detective Antoinette Conway, The Trespasser is at base a standard procedural. The craft kept me going for the first two-thirds, even as the plot meandered some. And as is often the case with French, you have to accept that some key characters may behave in ways or reveal motives that push the boundaries of believable human behavior. But the novel's triumph is its final hundred pages or so, which hurtle along in the best tradition of "couldn't put it down" (at least I couldn't). No hostage taking, no gunfight, no damsel in distress, no ticking time bomb: just a sequence of "interviews" between Conway and her suspect, as she attempts to outfox him and close the case. P.D. James could only have approved.