There is such a spooky atmosphere about this household that it’s hard for Cassie to fathom at first. The others live such a strange, hermetic existence that small predilections count for a lot. The house’s four other residents know that Lexie would deliberately pick the onions out of her food. Cassie’s masquerade is so perilous that at one point she nearly blows her cover by eating onions at a communal meal. She is taught about the things Lexie liked, for instance but no one can tell her what Lexie didn’t like or wouldn’t do. Before Cassie goes anywhere, she must be drilled in every known aspect of Lexie’s behavior, even though some identifying traits will be impossible for her to learn. “The Likeness” teases considerable suspense from this tricky arrangement. Today’s Whitethorn residents are about as popular with the locals as the former, aristocratic owners used to be. Whitethorn House is outside Dublin and close to Glenskehy, which was once a feudal village to house the mansion’s servants. The five of them, two women and three men, shared a big old house that one of the men had inherited. The dead young woman was also a student, and she lived with four others in a bizarrely intimate state of camaraderie. But Lexie was supposed to be a figment of Cassie’s imagination.Īt the behest of Frank Mackey, Cassie’s acerbic, wisecracking boss and an irrepressible Irish charmer, Cassie is sweet-talked into trying the unthinkable. Not for nothing is the new case labeled Operation Mirror: there is a dead Lexie Madison, and she looks like the spitting image of Cassie.
The reasons for the switch are grimly self-evident once Cassie gets a look at the victim.
Cassie is pulled off her current beat, domestic violence, and sent back to work on a murder investigation. But the fictitious Lexie Madison is long gone by the time “The Likeness” begins.Įxcept she’s not.
Cassie became a college student named Alexandra Madison in the course of a long investigation that left Cassie with stab wounds and nightmares. Her first book was the Edgar-winning “In the Woods,” in which a police detective named Cassie Maddox took on an undercover role. But “The Likeness,” Tana French’s second novel, has a much tighter bond with its predecessor. The usual sequel takes characters from an established book or series and then moves them on toward new adventures.
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