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The Secret Place

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The Secret Place

By: Tana French
Narrated by: Stephen Hogan, Lara Hutchinson
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About this listen

The photo shows a boy who was murdered a year ago.The caption says, "I know who killed him". Detective Stephen Moran hasn't seen Holly Mackey since she was a nine-year-old witness to the events of Faithful Place. Now she's 16 and she's shown up outside his squad room, with a photograph and a story. Even in her exclusive boarding school, in the graceful golden world that Stephen has always longed for, bad things happen and people have secrets. The previous year, Christopher Harper, from the neighbouring boys' school, was found murdered on the grounds. And today, in the Secret Place - the school noticeboard where girls can pin up their secrets anonymously - Holly found the card. Solving this case could take Stephen onto the Murder squad. But to get it solved, he will have to work with Detective Antoinette Conway - tough, prickly, an outsider, everything Stephen doesn't want in a partner. And he will have to find a way into the strange, charged, mysterious world that Holly and her three closest friends inhabit and disentangle the truth from their knot of secrets, even as he starts to suspect that the truth might be something he doesn't want to hear. From the multi-award-winning author of Sunday Times and New York Times best seller In the Woods, The Secret Place is a searing novel of psychological suspense.

©2014 Tana French (P)2014 Hodder & Stoughton Crime Fiction Mystery Suspense Thriller & Suspense Crime Fiction Exciting

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Critic reviews

"It's terrific - terrifying, amazing, and the prose is incandescent" ( Stephen King)
A wonderfully tender and savage thriller about loyalty, teenage friendship and first loves. Gripping and ingenious" ( Kate Mosse)
"The thing Tana French does better than almost any living crime writer is create suspense. She makes you feel as if you're the detective, and your whole future career, not to mention your mental equilibrium, depends upon working out the solution to the puzzle" ( Sophie Hannah)
"I've been enthusiastically telling everyone who will listen to read Tana French" ( Harlan Coben)
All stars
Most relevant  
Beautifully written, highly entertaining, characters come alive through the skills of two excellent narrators. Highly recommended..

The Secret Place

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Would you listen to The Secret Place again? Why?

This is a complex story about a murder in a girls school in Dublin. It covers issues about adolescent, class, psychology and metal illness.

Which character – as performed by Stephen Hogan and Lara Hutchinson – was your favourite?

All the characters and performances were good. Lara Hutchinson had the difficult task of playing numerous teenage girls and making them all sound credible.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

I loved the last chapter! It put everything in order.

Any additional comments?

All Tana French's books are excellent. They have depth, intelligence and an inner logic that makes them worthy of my time.

Another fantastic book!

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The story centres around a murder in a posh boarding school for girls. Two detectives of the Dublin murder squad must battle through the lies and cover ups laid out by two combative sets of girls. Both sets are pitted against each other.

The book was decent for the most part. I felt it could have ended earlier. It's probably 2 or 3 chapters too long.

Not her best work

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Great tale, another good listen from Tana French. One criticism. Lara Hutchinson. Sometimes I had trouble with her narration.

The Secret Place

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Tana shows great insight into the sociology of high school girls as the detectives manipulate and are manipulated in their efforts to uncover the murderer of a high school boy.
Well narrated, but those accents! I gave up rewinding and rewinding and playing at half speed in dozens of places in a vain attempt to catch what they said, especially Lara with her over-emphasised aitches. That really spoilt an otherwise excellent listen.

Unusual but good. Ghastly accents.

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No disrespect Tina Fey but this is how real "mean girls" look, sound and behave.
Tana French writes the twists and turns of this plot beautifully. It's truly character driven and by the end you care about each of them, because none of them are the caricature villain, they are all flawed and necessarily human.
Det Morran's perspective is very different from the other police officers we've been introduced to before, and that was a revelation too.
on to the next one, but this will be very hard to beat!

My Favourite of the Series So Far!

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Tana French is a very good writer but this is not one of her best. It’s far too long at over 20 hours, half of which is teenage conversations, or rather, how an adult thinks teenagers talk. Simultaneously these manage to be irritatingly trivial and mindbogglingly Machiavellian (and will age badly). The eight girls are mostly indistinguishable and their breathy narration was quite difficult for me to hear. Cliched mean girls, supernatural pointlessness that goes nowhere, clunky plot MacGuffins with mobile phones; all far too long, unengaging and unbelievable. The detective parts are good though, and I like how detectives from other novels in this series pop up; the story improved when a third reappeared. I was quite hoping by the end that one of the nuns might have been the murderer, sent bonkers by the vast miasma of loony intense friendships, hormones and body spray, but no such luck.

OMG!! Hello??? Totes irritating

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Fabulous voices will look for these readers again. Tana French still on top form. Beautifully written. Will read other books.

Excellent story and production

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This really catches the ethereal, spiritual world of young girls on the verge of growing up. Haunting writing.

Atmospheric

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Yet another amazing book by Tara French. Very clever to keep your interest right to the last minute, literally. Wonderful description and attention to detail draws you right into the girls world and paints a vivid picture of their lives.

Superb

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