If you like crime fiction with literary ambitions, this is a must-read.

I have now read every Tana French book (in the order I found them in used bookshops, not at all in sequence). I was beginning to worry that the one I read first —The Trespasser, which is one of favourite crime novels of all time — would never be matched. Happy to report I was wrong.

This has a lot of what makes French great: it grinds into every detail and moment of an investigator’s process and logic, it has unique, complex and realistic characters that other authors would build a franchise around, fantastic dialogue, and it’s about a lot more than a murder investigation.

It also avoids the unlikely coincidences, slow or overly complex plots and contrived twists that drag down some of her other books.

For my money, this is French’s best book.