The Trespasser

In spite of owning several of Tana French's books, I have never actually read one until now and it was a good read. Really interesting characters and tricky plot twists. As the New York Times says in its review, "When you read Ms. French ... make only one assumption: All of your initial assumptions are wrong." In this book, set in the Dublin Garda's "Murder Squad," the two newest detectives on the night shift get handed another apparent domestic dispute, just as they are going off duty. Antoinette Conway and her partner Steve Moran will be assigned a more senior detective from day shift, golden boy Breslin, to work with them on the case. A beautiful young woman, who Conway disparagingly compares to a Barbie doll look-alike, has been punched in the jaw hard enough to break teeth, and hit her head on the brick fireplace when she fell, dying from a brain bleed. Based on texts on the victim's phone, it happened sometime around 8 pm although the call didn't come into the local garda station until 5 am. The obvious suspect is the current boyfriend, timid bookstore owner Rory Fallon, who was scheduled to come to dinner at her house that night, but Conway isn't convinced and the evidence they has is only circumstantial. Breslin pushes for a hard press to extract a confession and a quick arrest. Steve and Conway begin to feel Breslin is pushing this down their throats and trying to set them up for a fall. Conway has already got a major chip on her shoulder about being persecuted by the other squad members. She comes from Missing Persons where she had good collegial relationships and a high solve rate. But ever since coming to the Murder Squad, someone, or several someones, have been playing nasty pranks on her and she has come to trust no one except her partner. The victim's best friend, Lucy, hints that victim Aislinn was seeing somebody else secretly. She had sent Aislinn a text the night of her dinner date warning her to be careful. We don't find out who this was or why she was worried until very near the end of the book, but it was so worth waiting for.
There is a fair amount of Irish and cop slang to wade through, but it also adds color to the dialog. If you are a fan of police procedurals, this is definitely a good one.
Reviews from The New York Times, the Washington Post (which calls her books "unfailingly intelligent and beautifully written"), the Guardian (which asserts this book "contains the most tense and serpentine interrogation scenes outside of John le Carré"), Kirkus, and too many more to link here.