|
|
Real Adriatic Store - The Likeness: A Novel
|
List Price: $25.95
Our Price: $16.35
Your Save: $ 9.60 ( 37% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Viking Adult
|
Average Customer Rating:  
|
|
Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.92
EAN: 9780670018864
ISBN: 0670018864
Label: Viking Adult
Manufacturer: Viking Adult
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 480
Publication Date: 2008-07-17
Publisher: Viking Adult
Studio: Viking Adult
|
|
|
|
|
|
Editorial Reviews:
|
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.
|
|
|
Spotlight customer reviews:
|
Customer Rating:
Summary: Wow, Great Page Turner!
Comment: I liked the first book Into The Woods. Loved the follow up The Likeness. The writer puts you in a small town in Ireland. Really interesting characters, you will want to live in "the house". You can read other reviews about the story i just wanted to give it a rave "cant put it down" review. This book entertains.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Languid
Comment: When I read an undercover detective story, I assume that there will be tense moments sprinkled throughout the book. After noting several missed opportunities in the first 100 pages, I adjusted my expectations and continued on, thinking instead that I could fill up on the rich descriptions, such as those that easily made me visualize the Whitehorn House and its inhabitants.
The problem is that this descriptiveness extended very little to the story itself. For example, "No Pasts" means we know little about the character's backgrounds. We never learn what the "huge, complicated, vicious fight" was that Cassie had with her former partner and best friend Rob, even though he pops into her mind any number of times during the story. At the end, the father of Lexie's baby is identified but we're told nothing of that relationship. We're left wondering how Lexie actually received the stab wound that led to her death.
The story's shortcomings, however, are deeper than just individual examples. There isn't one chapter where I honestly felt as though Cassie was in danger - except for some slight anxiety in the final pages. In fact, it's almost as though Cassie, who had experience in undercover murder investigations, was intimidated by the younger graduate students who generally behave as though they're freshmen in college.
"The Likeness" lacks that foreboding feeling of "Uh, oh, things are about to really blow up." And that's too bad because I had no problem, like some readers, accepting the premise that Cassie was investigating the death of someone who looked just like her. All of the ingredients to develop a unique storyline - having Cassie live with the deceased's roommates to flush out a murderer -- were there. Instead, the story wandered. Conversations go on and on, seemingly irrelevant at times, repeating in different words what was written two pages earlier. A more tightly-written book where the author better displayed how actual detective investigations worked, with their feints and edgy back-and-forth querying, would have added much-needed suspense.
Customer Rating:
Summary: I didn't want it to end...
Comment: Even better than "In the Woods". I can't wait for her next book. Tana French will always have a spot on my bookshelves!
Customer Rating:
Summary: One of the best mysteries of the year.
Comment: The writing is superb, and I love the characters. I really enjoyed In the Woods too, and will be watching for her next book.
Customer Rating:
Summary: "Innocence isn't enough."
Comment:
It is always exciting to discover a brilliant new talent. In her second thriller, The Likeness, Irish writer Tana French spins an elaborate tale that is bound to the roots of Irish history and the unique world of law enforcement as depicted by detectives Cassie Maddox, Frank Mackey and Sam O'Neill. Cassie and Sam are nurturing a quiet relationship that began soon after Cassie left the Murder Squad after a particularly grueling case. Now she is ensconced in Domestic Violence, certainly less dangerous than the Murder Squad or her former undercover case with Mackey. Suddenly the past collides with the present when Sam calls Cassie to come to a crime scene, the panic in his voice palpable. A body lays dead in a rural area outside Dublin in a dilapidated famine shack, a young woman who is the exact image of Detective Maddox , her doppelganger. The unpredictable Detective Mackey immediately hatches a plot with O'Neill's reluctant approval, but the decision will be Cassie's: return to Alexandra Madison's life after the police announce Lexie's recovery from her stab wound.
French isn't content with this imaginative plot, adding yet another twist to the tale: the murdered young woman has co-opted every detail of Cassie's former undercover identity. Reeling from the implications of their mutual past, Cassie becomes Lexie, determined to discover the motivation for the girl's secrecy and the event that has led to Lexie's fatal stabbing in a remote shack. There is some indication of the many nuances at play as Mackey drills the minutiae of Lexie's existence into Cassie's memory. A grad student in Dublin, Lexie lives with four other grad students in a rambling estate, Whitethorn House, inherited by one of the group, Daniel March. Gradually restoring the home during quiet evenings at home, Daniel, Lexie, Justin, Rafe and Abby form a complex unit, a "family" that shares decisions, finances and an intense emotional bond to one another. Careful to maintain her cover, Cassie steps into the rarified world of Whitethorn House, a waiting minefield, the detective unsure how her housemates will respond.
Blindsided by the harmonious relationships of the group, Cassie is seduced by an opportunity for closeness she has never experienced, caught between her dedication to her work and an increasing fascination with the others, the quiet, enigmatic Daniel, mercurial Rafe, insecure and troubled Justin and brilliant Abby. But for all her romantic notions of a sheltered domestic environment, real life eventually intrudes. Whether from within the house or the unfriendly village with an old grudge against the Marches, there is a murderer at large. As complex as Cassie's ties to her "new" friends are the undercurrents of tension between O'Neill and Mackey, Frank a master of manipulation in pursuit of a goal. Dense and rich, French's prose is evocative of time, place and history, her conflicted protagonist faced with a shattering decision, whether to embrace a new life or return to the old, a life forever changed by Lexie's sad fate, "the multiple innocences that make up guilt." Luan Gaines/2008.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
