The Secret Place

This murder mystery set in a upper class girl's school in Dublin has a poignant portrayal of friendship and solidarity among a group of four girls as they navigate high school and teenage social pressures together. Although they are at an all girls' school, the corresponding all boys' high school is right next door and they interact with the boys regularly. When one of the students from the boys school turns up dead on the grounds of the girls' school and the police fail to find the murderer, it leaves everyone at the school uneasy. This story starts when one of the girls brings a postcard that announces "I know who killed Chris Harper," which she found posted in her school, to an ambitious detective in the Cold Case division of the police. The framing of the story is that this Cold Case detective brings the postcard to the detective in the Murder division who was in charge of the case when it first was investigated and the two of them revive the investigation.

The investigation aspect of the story was the least compelling to me. I really wasn't interested in the dynamics between the two detectives, and I found it hard to swallow the idea that the entire investigation portrayed in the book took place over the course of one long day. But I truly enjoyed the part of the book that focused on the friendship between the girls, and the hostilities with a rival group headed by their archnemesis Joanne. If Tana French had left the cops out of it and let the girls figure it all out amongst themselves, The Secret Place might have been really interesting. As it was, it was a pretty good mystery.