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Sep 12, 2014

The Secret Place, Tana French

The Secret Place is a bulletin board at St Kilda’s School for Girls. Frank Mackey (The Likeness, Faithful Place) is reluctantly letting sixteen year old daughter Holly board there instead of living at home. Detective Stephen Moran (Faithful Place) hasn’t seen Holly since she was nine.

When she turns up outside his office, with a card she took from the school bulletin board Moran takes the information to Antoinette Conway who worked the original case, a year ago. Popular student Christopher Harper was found dead on the grounds of St Kilda’s and Holly’s photo shows a smiling Harper with the caption ‘I know who killed him’ on the back. At the time, Conway didn’t get past the cliques and the bleating of panicky rich parents and their lawyers. But in her opinion Harper was on a promise with one of the St Kilda’s girls, but why wait a year to dredge the whole thing up again. What changed?

Conway, reluctant to trust Moran, takes him with her to St Kilda’s waiting for him to screw up so that she can boot him from the investigation. Each needs something from the other, for Conway this is a chance to prove what she suspected all along. For Moran it’s an opportunity to join the murder squad, but throw Frank Mackey into the mix and everything gets skewed, especially when he’s thinking like a father not a detective. Conway and Moran have until the end of the school day to unmask a murderer.


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