more it becomes apparent that he hasn't.

Advertisement:

French's hypnotic storytelling remains in full force in this novel, despite having shaken off the dreaminess that suffused "In the Woods" and "The Likeness." This is Roddy Doyle territory, an excavation of that particular torture experienced by those who want to break out of a hopeless, working-class world but keep getting sucked back in by the loyalty that is its one redeeming quality. "Faithful Place" is wrenching to a degree that detective fiction rarely achieves: Frank -- a cocky devil who prides himself on his skillful lying and ability to play other people -- gets pulled apart psychologically as he pursues Rosie's killer, and the reader undergoes it with him. By the end, it's difficult to distinguish what the real crime isor who committed it.

Which is not to say that French doesn't solve the novel's technical mystery or that the answer isn't tightly cinched into her larger themes. Like Kate Atkinson, who has grafted the contemporary novel of manners onto the bones of the detective story in her Jackson Brodie series, French sticks to the genre's brief while conveying it into new territory. But where the Brodie books are all pretty much the same in tone and subject matter, French does something fresh with every novel, each one as powerful as the last but in a very different manner. Perhaps she has superpowers of her own? Whatever the source of her gift, it's only growing more miraculous with every book.

Laura Miller

Laura Miller is the author of "The Magician's Book: