tana french and i have come a long way, baby... 
 and with this book, we are officially in love. 
 this is exactly the kind of book i was expecting from her. in the woods was great at the start and frustrating at the end, and the likeness was tons of fun for a staggeringly unbelievable premise. but really, really fun. 
 but this one is just great. i don't read a lot of mysteries, but when i read a good one, i get this glow of "ohhhhh - that's why people like these". and in this case, it isn't even that the mystery is that revolutionary - it follows the usual pattern: crime, investigation, red herring red herring red herring, satisfying but not unreasonable conclusion. 
 and then she goes and throws a little tana french monkey wrench into it just so you know it is her. but this one is more subtle and therefore less hair-pulling-out frustrating than the first book. 
 her strength is in the other stuff, the atmosphere surrounding the mystery. i love the irish. when i moved into this neighborhood it was almost entirely irish, and it was wonderful to walk down the street and be buoyed by the lilting cadence of those folks and their unexpected insertion of the word "after" in sentences, as in "he's after having a pint." i loved being called "love" and "duckie" and "chickadee" by older maternal women selling me pasties. it is a somewhat different neighborhood now, but there are still pockets of my beloved irish. and this book is all of that and more - all written in dialect, all about class structure and the struggle to make something of a life despite the demands of the family. and god, this family. so poisonous, so heart-scrabbling, so much guilt and passive-aggression. oofa - i loved each and every one of them. 
 this book can be read as a stand-alone, by the way - you don't have to have read the first two, but someday i would like some answers to my questions in the first book,please. 
 this review used to have buried treasure and is now simply serviceable. my apologies, world...