Reading Ireland Month – BooksPlease

It’s nearly the end of March when the Reading Ireland Month 2025 hosted by Cathy at 746 Books ends. I had a list of books to choose from and I read one of my TBRs, The Likeness by Tana French, a book I’ve had for eight years. It’s the second book in the Dublin Murder Squad Mysteries. I read the first book, In the Woods, in 2014.

Hodder and Stoughton| 2008| 574 pages| 4*

Description:

Still traumatised by her brush with a psychopath, Detective Cassie Maddox transfers out of the Murder squad and starts a relationship with fellow detective Sam O’Neill. When he calls her to the scene of his new case, she is shocked to find that the murdered girl is her double. What’s more, her ID shows she is Lexie Madison – the identity Cassie used, years ago, as an undercover detective. With no leads, no suspects and no clues to Lexie’s real identity, Cassie’s old boss spots the opportunity of a lifetime: send Cassie undercover in her place, to tempt the killer out of hiding to finish the job.

I loved this book. I couldn’t remember very much about In the Woods, but I had no difficulty in following The Likeness, so I think it’s a good standalone mystery. It’s a gripping fast paced book, set in Ireland, with well drawn characters, including a group of five friends living in a large house in the countryside. French portrays each of these friends in detail, and as the story progresses their backgrounds and relationships are revealed. The book begins as one of the friends, Lexie Madison is murdered.

Astonished by the fact that Lexie is her double, Detective Cassie Maddox, who played a small role in In the Woods, is persuaded to go undercover at the house, and assume the dead women’s identity, the police having told her friends she wasn’t killed, but was merely wounded. Far-fetched, yes, but it didn’t take me long before I found myself accepting this was feasible. If you find that impossible then this book is not for you, which would be a shame as it is well written, outstanding in its depiction of the Irish countryside and the interaction of the characters. It explores their feelings and emotions, their motivations and desires to such an extent that I was totally engrossed in the book, hoping, irrationally, that Lexie was not dead but had survived and all would be well. Of course, that was not possible and the ending was inevitable.

Now I am just as eager to read the next book in the series, Faithful Place, which features one of the other characters in the Murder Squad, Undercover cop Frank Mackay.

I know – I said I was cutting down on challenges this year, but this is an event not a challenge and it’s only during March. It’s bring hosted by Cathy at 746 Books and Raging Fluff ‘to celebrate the wealth and breadth and general awesomeness of Irish cultural life. Reading Ireland Month (or The Begorrathon as it is affectionately known) will feature book and film reviews, poems, music, interviews, giveaways and much, much more.‘

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I have some books by Irish authors and I may have more than these – I don’t choose books based on the authors’ nationality – but these are the books from my stock of to-be-read books that I think qualify:

Anybody Out There by Marian Keyes
The Other Side of the Story by Marian Keyes
The Gathering by Anne Enright
Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
The Secret Place by Tana French
Sovereignty of Good by Iris Murdoch
Ulysses by James Joyce
The Vicar of Wakefield by Oliver Goldsmith
Watchman by Ian Rankin*
Whitethorn Woods by Maeve Binchy
The House by the Churchyard by Sheridan Le Fanu

But I’m going to be realistic and won’t be reading all of them, or even some of them (particularly Ulysses – I’ve been resisting that one for years). I’m just aiming to read one of them.

I could cheat and add Let the Dead Speak by Jane Casey to my list, but I read it this month (February) so it doesn’t really count – or does it? I’m in the middle of writing a post about it, so maybe I could sneak it in at the beginning of March. It’s her latest Maeve Kerrigan book and it’s very good.

Other than that I’m leaning towards reading The Secret Place by Tana French.

Watch this space.

*edited 26 February – Watchman is set partly in Ireland but as some people have correctly pointed out Ian Rankin is not Irish. I shall be reading this book but not including it the Reading Ireland Month.