The Secret Place (Dublin Murder Squad, #5) by Tana French.

Follow Detective Stephen Moran of Cold Cases as he helps solve the murder of a teenage boy found on school grounds.

Oh dear, dear. Gone is the usual format I have come to enjoy from Tana and her Dublin Murder Squad series of novels. The Secret Place is a mish mash of a tiresome story. Gone is the strong first person narrative of the lead detective told in real time, to be replaced by two time frames. This story is told through alternating chapters. Part A is a group of 4 teenage boarding school girls and Part B is told from Detective Stephen Moran's point of view, only he is NOT the Senior Investigating Officer. The murder happened over a year ago and this constant swapping every chapter between time frames and points of view drove me potty! It was easy to relate to Detective Stephen Moran as it is a workplace drama but teenage girls is another world!  These stories are not aimed at the YA market so I felt it was wrong to donate half of this book to these teenagers and their childish rantings.

There is no specialist police work in this novel and this case is solved purely by talking to 8 school girls. The plot is average and when I got to the end, I felt disappointed. I ran through the what-if's and thought that adults would not have been fooled into being caught. The case was easy for the police to solve and they made an arrest in just one long day at the boarding school.

I did not find The Secret Place a thrilling read, more of a mystery and a drag at that! The murderer is confirmed around three quarters of the way through this book, leading to the frustration that you know more than the police! The last quarter is spent filling in the gaps, more questioning of the 8 school girls, obtaining a confession and alternating between time frames on every new chapter. Even when the girl is in custody the book falls back in time to reveal a motive as to why this case moved from cold to active!

I found The Secret Place to be a POOR read and it only gets 2 stars from me. This was a big disappointment for me as I have given the previous 4 books in this series the top score of 5 stars each. I hope that the 6th novel sees Tana back to form, otherwise it is 2 strikes and you are out lass.

The Secret Place was written in 2014 and is available as an Amazon Kindle eBook.