Tana French

Tana French is an Irish crime novelist whose Dublin Murder Squad series — including The Likeness and Faithful Place — is among the most literarily ambitious crime fiction being written.

Tana French is among a small group of crime writers who consistently demonstrate that the genre can support the density of ambition and prose associated with literary fiction. Her Dublin Murder Squad novels — which include The Likeness, Faithful Place, Broken Harbor, The Secret Place, and The Trespasser — are linked more by setting and recurrence of minor characters than by a single protagonist, and this structural choice keeps the series fresh in ways that most long-running crime series are not. Each book explores not just a murder but a psychological and social world: the book’s detective is always implicated in the case more deeply than is professionally safe.

The Likeness puts detective Cassie Maddock undercover as a dead woman to investigate her murder within an isolated academic household, and the atmosphere of the closed community it describes is oppressively good. Faithful Place excavates the history of working-class Dublin through one detective’s return to his childhood street. Broken Harbor is bleaker than most — a financial-crisis-era investigation into family annihilation that functions as a study in desperation and pride. French writes about Ireland’s economic and social history with authority, and the sense of place in all her novels is exceptional.

Some readers find that her books prioritize atmosphere and character at the expense of plot momentum, and her climaxes can occasionally feel less earned than the psychological build-up that precedes them. But as a crime writer working at the top of the form, French is essential.