The Likeness ~ Tana French

Genre: Adult Fiction/Suspense
Publisher: Penguin
512 pages
ISBN: 9780143115625
Source: Bookstore

We have all had hangovers but there is nothing like the headache handed out the morning after you botch a major case. Most people would have moved out of the country after the embarrassing mess that was Cassie and Rob’s case, last year. Cassie, though, simply transferred divisions and kept the Murder squad out of sight and out of mind.

At least she tried to.

Nightmares, as well as simply longing for her ex-partner and former division, poke excruciating holes in the once strong, sassy sleuth’s emotional armor.

She toughs it out, though, working her way through the more routine, albeit “useful” world of Domestic Violence.  Her wall holds up until the day her boyfriend (who still happens to be on Murder) rings, frantically, fearing that she has met her end.

Why on earth would he think that when she’s been at work, all day?

Well, it turns out that, the authorities have found a body in a tiny cabin out in Glenskehy. The concern from the squad is not one based on her Murder experience but her face.  See, this body happens to look one hundred and ten percent like our leading lady.

The coincidence gets weirder when the body is examined. The victim’s wallet contains an i.d. card that Cassie used, several years ago, under the name Lexie Madison, while working as an undercover, in the area.Of course, back then, she was simply a fictitious character, created by the detectives working the case.

It takes a certain madness to rule in the world of Undercover and that madness has a name: Frank Mackey, Cassie’s former Undercover chief. Frank has teamed up with Murder, on the case and has one heck of an idea. As impossible as it might seem to pull off, Frank seduces Cassie back into the addictive world of Undercover to, once again, play Lexie (claiming to her friends and family that the stab wound was not fatal), this time, working her into a strange life in progress, rather than making it up as she goes along.

To make a pretty inconceivable plan take flight, she’ll also have to make it past the former guardians of Lexie’s past life, her housemates and fellow PhD students, who know Lexie, literally, inside and out. Though the risks may be high and the probability of success low, Cassie is no rookie. She jumps in right where Lexie left off with no serious hang ups.

Undercover is a sneaky lady, though. As Cassie works her way into the intricate, intense world of the cluster living at the house, she finds a hauntingly familiar synchronicity among the friends that smacks of her defunct partnership with Rob. As this once lost, now somewhat relocated, feeling of belonging and comfort creeps in around her, things heat up and lines begin to blur, leaving Cassie dangerously close to losing perspective.

It seems that the risk of this case is not in getting in but, rather, in getting out.

When I finished In the Woods, a year ago, I simply had to have this book. I adored French’s first book and needed to get my hands on something else like it.

I couldn’t do it.

I started The Likeness, last January, but put it down because I needed time to get over the trauma at the end of its predecessor. A year later, I found it much easier to dive in. Although, I found it comforting to see that Cassie was as distraught as I was that the second story didn’t involve Rob.

The cast and case are both vastly different in each book but the themes of companionship, identity, loyalty and complex decisions weave two similarly fantastic pieces. I can’t say that I like one better than the other but I can, this time, confidently swing to French’s third book, Faithful Place, understanding that it will still wrap around me and pull my whole imagination into an amazing story.