Not a great read. The only mystery here is how the author managed to publish this story. ( )

For such an absurd premise, this book is so well-written that you very willingly suspend your disbelief to follow it through to the end. I listened to the audio up to the last 150 pages, and then switched to the book because I was becoming impatient with the amount of time it was taking up. However, I loved the audio production, and it was nice to still have all of the great Irish accents knocking around in my head as I finished reading it. ( )

Book 2 in the Cassie Maddox series

How long can someone assume different identities and keep it up? Seems Ms French protagonist is being given nine lives sending Cassie once more undercover. Like her first novel, the story is set in Dublin and the mystery entails an investigation into a homicide.

After being stabbed during her last undercover assignment Cassie had been assigned to the Domestic Violence (DV) division. The suspense starts when Cassie is summoned to the scene of a homicide. There, she and others are startled by the fact that the victim is the mirror image of Cassie; also the victim’s ID is Lexie Madison, one of Cassie’s previous undercover names.

The suspense grows when it is decided to hide the events from the media and have Cassie once again go undercover and infiltrate the dead girl’s world. Unfortunately the plot drags when much of the novel is centered on the day to day lifestyle of victim’s strange roommates. Even with some twists and turns the main problem is extreme slowness (boredom), it gets bogged down with too many descriptions of domestic life, leaving us with a mystery that is straightforward with few surprises. I found the plot bland and the characters missing development.

After reading the first novel “In the Woods” which I enjoyed, this was a disappointment ( )

Apparently, I am among the relative minority that thinks Tana French’s work is derivative and top-heavy. In The Woods might be excused as a first novel; the one with training wheels, if you will. It was overly dramatic and brooding with a side-helping of insanity. But people still compared French to Donna Tart. Tart is another one I don’t understand. I just don’t find it clever when authors construct several hundred pages of thick, atmospheric plot only to ultimately tell readers, “Insanity made them do it”. French and Tart have a lot in common in that sense.

I was also irritated when I realized that French had written herself into her own novels. Authors as characters are always a let-down to me. A gold star goes to anyone else who instantly realized that Cassie Maddox (who is described several times as part French) is actually Tana French under an alias.

Apparently, French took the comparison to Tart to heart almost completely in The Likeness. The characters, settings and moods seem lifted almost verbatim from Tart’s “The Secret History”, but with the extra booster of a crazy, look-alike plot scheme that seems like a rift on some old Twilight Zone script.

Here’s the saddest part: between Tart and French’s work, “The Likeness” is the better book! But I’m not giving out prizes for re-writing someone else’s plot. And I’m especially not giving out prizes for stealing someone else’s characters! ( )

I probably read this too fast.

So, I liked it almost as much as her first book In the Woods, and I loved how some things were different about it. This is a great demonstration of an author with a strong voice writing from the point of view of two characters (Rob Ryan in the first, Cassie Maddox in the second) and you can feel where the tone is the author's and where it's the narrator's. (Rob is much funnier than Cassie, for example, and when I realized that, I was disappointed at first, but then impressed.)

It's not quite a criticism, but I found myself perplexed by the Secret History-ish feel of it. It was almost uncanny, I even thought of these characters by their corresponding Secret History names, most especially Henry for Daniel and Camilla for Abby.

The set-up for the mystery is especially good: a murdered girl is identified as Lexie Madison, an alias created for Cassie when she was working an undercover assignment prior to the events of In the Woods.

I think anything else I can say veers too much into spoilery territory. Hmmmm. I liked how the few references to the events of In the Woods felt realistic and made sense. I go back and forth on whether I buy the premise of the investigation - could someone do what Cassie did? It seems so unlikely, but then that could be what makes it work, because the people involved would never suspect it, because if that was you, and you did suspect something, you'd think "oh no, that's impossible." You wouldn't even really think it, you'd kind of process it automatically.

Overall, very good crime novel that shouldn't be lumped in with any kind of genre at all. Solid A. Recommended to people who like quality writing with their police procedurals, although I strongly suggest that In the Woods and The Likeness be read in order. ( )

This book really pulled me in-- the characters and the private world they were trying to build for themselves stayed with me long after I read the book. Although the premise wasn't very believable, the characters were fascinating, and you almost wanted Cassie to abandon her real life and slip permanently into Lexie's. ( )

Cassie Maddox is a police detective who is called to a crime scene where she is literally a dead ringer (sorry) for a murdered graduate student , Lexy Madison, who is found in an abandoned house in the Irish countryside. Lexy's four roomates/friends live together in an old mansion near the crime scene and Cassie goes undercover as Lexy to try to find the killer. What Cassie didn't count on was how much she would enjoy living with the others and stepping in to Lexy's life. As she gets closer to finding the killer, Cassie struggles with her objectivity as she finds she enjoys this newfound closeness with this family of grad student friends. This book was suspenseful and fast paced and a continuation of Tana French's first book, In the Woods. I wish I had read that one first as her experiences in the first novel were frequently referenced. However, this book was also good as a stand-alone novel. I had a difficult time putting it down and thought (and dreamt) about the characters! ( )

French's excellent follow-up to her debut In the Woods is a well-crafted and unique mystery. A look-alike of Dublin Detective Cassie Maddox is found dead, and it quickly becomes clear that the victim had stolen an identity created for Maddox in a previous undercover investigation. Cassie accepts an undercover assignment and slips into the dead girl's life in an attempt to solve the mystery, and begins to fall in love with the world that the victim had created for herself.
Aside from the recurring characters, this novel is not overly related to In the Woods, and I found the repeated references to the case in that book to be a little forced and annoying, but that's really the only complaint. This novel is tight, exciting, and fun to read. Highly recommended to fans of the genre.

[The Likeness] is Tana French's second mystery and involves one of the main characters of the first one. [In the Woods] was told from the point of view of the male partner of two cops and dealt a lot with the effect of a case on a trauma in his past. This second book is not a sequel of that one. The partners have broken up and the male cop doesn't really come into this book, although he is mentioned. It is told from the point of view of the female partner, Cassie, who has moved to the domestic violence unit, but now is pulled into an undercover assignment. She was previously in undercover before joining the murder squad. This undercover assignment is an unusual one, and most of the book shows her being drawn into the character that she is playing in the assignment.

While I liked [In the Woods] very much, I found [the Likeness] to be a stronger and more convincing work. I definitely recommend it. ( )

Cassie Maddox is a detective in Dublin. She works in the DV, the Domestic Violence squad. It’s boring, predictable and safe, especially compared to her earlier assignments in undercover and homicide. When a young woman turns up murdered in an abandoned cottage, things take a strange turn. According to her college I.D., she was Alexandra Madison. This was an alias Cassie had used when she last went undercover and even more bizarre, the deceased was a dead-ringer for Cassie. May the games begin. This is Tana French’s second novel, her first also featured Detective Maddox and she’s an amazing story-teller. She builds mood and character wonderfully and keeps an under-current of suspense bubbling throughout. If you are interested in crime fiction ,with a strong literary edge, look no further. She's the real deal! ( )

The dark but riveting story of a policewoman who goes undercover to find the murderer of her doppelganger. Is Cassie Maddox committed to solving the case or has she become too enmeshed in the life of the victim? ( )

second in series after In the Woods - another excellent character study and strange mystery... ( )

Not having read the author's first novel, "In the Woods," I can't offer a comparison to this sequel, "The Likeness." However, I can say that the book surpassed my expectations. I found the plot somewhat unique and the device of having a homicide detective who is a physical double of the murder victim very intriguing.

The novel begins when Lexie Madison is found murdered in a long-abandoned ruin near the house she shares with her four friends. The problem that brings in the Murder Squad from Dublin, however, is that Lexie Madison only exists on paper; she was created as part of an undercover operation that ended when Detective Cassie Maddox, the agent who attended Trinity College as Lexie, was stabbed by a drug addict. Lexie Madiosn was immediately shelved by Undercover Squad Supervisor Frank Mackey, and Cassie fled to the boring but safe Domestic Violence Squad. So how did Lexie magically come to life and die all on her own when she never truly existed in the first place? Mackey is convinced Cassie is the perfect tool to investigate a crime he takes personally and pulls out all the stops to convince her. How Cassie infiltrates the tight group of Lexie's friends and how their stories affect her own becomes an intoxicating read. French uses the setting of 5 post-graduate literature majors living together in an enchanting old Victorian mansion to create her very literary and psychologically damaged characters. Readers can't help but be drawn to the situation but may find themselves sharing Cassie's dilemma: Do they really want to know who killed Lexie Madison and why?

Although Cassie's constant introspection occasionally becomes a bit tedious, the complexity of the situation, characters, and plot overcomes this weakness. This mystery definitely has staying power. ( )

The Likeness: Cassie Maddox is a detective in Ireland, assigned to the Domestic Violence Squad. But four years ago she worked briefly undercover as Lexie Madison, a college student who dealt drugs. Cassie gets a call from her former boss to meet him at a murder scene. When she arrives, she is stunned to discover that the murder victim is a young woman who looks exactly like her. She is even more stunned to find that her name is Lexie Madison, the fictitious identity created by Cassie and her then boss, Frank. This Lexie was a post-graduate student living with four others in Whitethorn House, a large estate owned by one of the other students, a very tight close-knit group of friends. Frank convinces Cassie that to solve the murder, she needs to take on the identity of Lexie once again. While Lexie's friends believe she is in a coma, Cassie uses this time to learn everything she can about this Lexie and then moves into Whitethorn House to take Lexie's place. Cassie becomes Lexie so well and becomes fascinated with her alter ego and the life/lies she was living, so much so that it becomes uncertain whether Cassie wants to solve the murder at all or to continue living Lexie's life.

Cassie Maddox was in Tana French's debut novel, In the Woods, but was not the main character. The Likeness makes many references to the first novel but it is not necessary to read it before reading this one.

The Likeness is incredibly suspenseful with a well-constructed plot. The first three quarters of the book moved along at a fast pace. The ending seemed to drag a bit, but this may have been because I was reading it a two o'clock in the morning and was very tired. But I didn't put the book down to go to bed because I had to finish it! I had no clue who the killer was and only three quarters of the way through did I begin to have suspects. Not only was this story a great mystery but Cassie Maddox is a great, complex character and I wasn't always sure what she was going to do. This is a must read and I a ( )

The plot line of this mystery/suspense novel hinges upon Irish police detective, Cassie Maddox, who is lured into an undercover investigation of the murder of her doppelganger, Lexie Madison, who has stolen Cassie's undercover identity from a previous case.

Cassie is still shell shocked from events of the previous novel, In the Woods, and has transferred from murder to domestic violence investigations. But the combination of this look-alike murder victim with no clues to her identity or that of the murderer, and the psychological manipulation of Frank, her supervisor from previous under cover work, compels Cassie to go undercover once again.

Cassie steps into the life that Lexie created as a post grad student at Trinity College with 4 unusual housemates. From there the suspense builds. The writing is taut, the characters and their relationships are well developed, and the psychological tension held my attention through the book.

I tend to judge a murder mystery by how early in the book I figure out "who dunnit".....I didn't figure it out in this one. My only criticism is that occasionally the author gets carried away with descriptive metaphors.

If you like mysteries and suspense, this is a great summer read. ( )

Detective Cassie Maddox is called in on a murder case. A young girl was found dead from a stab wound in a run down cottage in the middle of nowhere. The weird thing about it, the victim looks exactly like Cassie. AND her ID says her name is Lexie Madison...a name Cassie made up for herself during one of her undercover stings. Hmmm...right?

There's really no clues in the case. Lexie was apparently a grad student who lived with four other students in a run down mansion near where her body was found. Her roommates become the obvious suspects. So...Cassie goes undercover as Lexie. They tell the roommates that she was near death and after a while she goes back to live with them.

So. Who's Lexie really? Who killed her? Who/what was she running away from?

I love Tana French's novels because they really draw you in psychologically. You get in Cassie's head as she's preparing to be Lexie. And she's trying to profile the victim who was not who she said she was. Love it.

And I just love Cassie's character.

Just go read it. ( )

Great book, even better than In The Woods (in my humble opinion.) Beautiful, suspenseful writing that keeps you interested. I don't usually read mysteries, but if all of them were like these books I would! ( )

The Likeness is one nail biting roller coaster! I loved the audio version as the narrator had a heavy Irish accent and I really felt that Cassie was telling me her story. I found myself tired after driving six hours straight, but wishing that we hadn't come up to our hotel room just so I could listen for a wee bit more. I ended up not finishing The Likeness on the road, so the first night back home I did something I have never done. I popped those earphones in my ear, laid down in bed, and listened tot he remaining couple of hours. It was suppose to be a bedtime listening, you know? But the anticipation of it all kept me up for much longer than what I anticipated.

http://annotatedreading.blogspot.com/... ( )

In the sequel to "In the Woods", Cassie Maddox has left Murder, transferred to Domestic Violence and begun a relationship with fellow detective Sam O'Neill. But when a girl going by the name of Lexie Madison - Cassie's alias when she was undercover - turns up dead in Wicklow, Cassie returns to undercover work to live as Lexie Madison in an attempt to find her killer. Very good, but not as creepy as "In the Woods", and a little long. Didn't really get started for 100 or so pages. ( )

This was French's follow up to In the Woods. It centers around Cassie Maddox, an investigator who is now working in the Domestic Violence unit in a police station in Ireland. One morning, she gets an hysterical call from her boyfriend who is asking her to come to a Murder crime scene. At the scene, she finds the body of a young woman who looks disturbingly like her and her ID says that she's Lexie Maddison - a cover that belonged to Cassie when she worked undercover. Cassie is asked to step into "Lexie's" life as an undercover agent to gain information about Lexie's life and who could possibly be the killer.

Lexie is living with 4 other college students, all postgrads in English, in a large, crumbling house. Her housemates are all quite interesting and it was fascinating to watch their stories unfold. This was another great summer read! ( )

This was a great book. I don't normally read mysteries but I couldn't put this one down. The character development was wonderful and the suspense had me staying up till one in the morning to finish it. Highly recommended. ( )

The Likeness
Tana French

In French’s debut novel, In the Woods, she introduces the character of Detective Cassie Maddox, who started out in the Dublin police force as an undercover agent, then moved to the Murder Squad. Her involvement in Operation Vestal Virgin cause a permanent estrangement from her partner Rob Ryan, and scarred Cassie herself who, by the end of that book, transferred out of Murder and into Domestic Violence.

The Likeness is Cassie’s story; she is the narrator. It is through her eyes and shfting perceptions that we see the unfolding undercover investigation into the murder of a young woman who is Cassie’s exact double--and who has been using Cassie’s completely fake undercover name, Alexandra Madison from her time in Undercover six years previously. Alexandra, or Lexie, had been a post-graduate student at Trinity College in Dublin and lived with four misfits in an odd situation in an old Georgian manor recently inherited by one of the group. However, no one knows outside of a few police officers that Lexie is really dead. Frank, her old boss in Undercover, persuades Cassie to impersonate Lexie in order to infiltrate the group to get a lead on the murderer. To do so effectively, Cassie must assume Lexie’s persona completely--how she walks, how she holds a cigarette, how she laughs--as well as absorb enough information to slide into the group. In other words, she has to become Lexie while remaining Cassie Maddox with a face that goes with both women.

French has written a superb police procedural cum psychological thriller, with enough subtle twists to satisfy any reader. We see everything through Cassie’s eyes, and we watch her struggle against becoming completely subsumed by Lexie’s personality; in fact, the greater struggle is whether to fight it at all.

The story is powerful, absorbing, a real page-turner. French’s writing is perfect; she sets moods and reveals psychological states, follows the action and delivers dialogue in the same, elegant, off-beat manner in which she wrote In The Woods only with a more economy of words--the plot never falters. Cassie is a more complex character than Rob Ryan, and French spends more time with her than she did with Rob. The result is, in my opinion, better than In The Woods--tauter,more subtly complex, with far more richly developed characters.

A gem of a book, not to be missed. Highly recommended. ( )

Wow. The author has a way with words. She draws you into the undercover experience to the extent that when people speak to the main character as Cassie, you unconsciously wonder why they are calling her that. The point of this book isn't really the whodunit or even the why; its the experience of finding those answers. ( )

I don't know about you, but I read mysteries and thrillers the same way I eat popcorn. In big, greedy handfuls, with bits and pieces falling to the wayside. Not really savoring it, just one goal in mind, get to the end. Eat it all, finish the bowl. I'm ashamed to say that alot of times when I read a thriller, a week later, I can hardly remember what I've read. I read them so quickly, they just don't have time to create memories in my mind.

I am happy to say that it was not so with The Likeness: A Novel by Tara French.

Here is the requisite jacket blurb:

Six months after the events of In the Woods, Detective Cassie Maddox is still recovering. Transferred out of Dublin’s Murder squad at her own request, she vows never to return. That is, until her boyfriend, Detective Sam O’Neill, calls her one beautiful spring morning, urgently asking her to come to a murder scene in the small town of Glenskehy.

It isn’t until Cassie sees the body that she understands Sam’s insistence. The dead girl is Cassie’s double, and she carries ID identifying her as Alexandra Madison, an alias Cassie herself used years ago when she worked undercover. The question becomes not only who killed this girl, but who was this girl?

Frank Mackey, Cassie’s former undercover boss, sees the opportunity of a lifetime. Having played Lexie Madison once before, Cassie is in the perfect position to take her place. The police will tell the media and Lexie’s four housemates that the stab wound wasn’t fatal. And Cassie will go on living Lexie’s life until the killer is lured out to finish off the job.

It’s a brilliant idea, until Cassie finds herself more emotionally involved in Lexie’s life than she anticipated. Sharing the ramshackle old Whitethorn House with Lexie’s strange, tight-knit group of university friends, Cassie is slowly seduced by the victim’s way of life, by the thought of working on a murder investigation again, and by the mystery of the victim herself. As Cassie nears the truth about what happened to Lexie Madison and who she really was, the lines between professional and personal, work and play, reality and fantasy become desperately tangled, and Cassie finds herself on the edge of losing herself forever.

I think it was the setting of the story that really set this apart from just a plain old mystery to me. The housemates in this story share this lovely old home. They don't watch television or play on a computer, instead they spend their time fixing up the house, playing old-fashioned games and cards, talking, and reading. So, while I was keeping tabs on the mystery, I was also enjoying the lifestyle of the characters. Usually I read thrillers because I want to be caught up in the mystery and I read other books because I want to be caught up in the story and the characters, this book gave me both. ( )

Ms. French has a knack for creating atmosphere and suggesting all kinds of things that in the end may have nothing to do with the actual mystery. I figured out "whodunnit" a little sooner with this second novel, but it definitely entertained. I liked too, finding out a little about "what happened next?" with regard to Ms. French's first novel with this character (In the Woods. Another thing I enjoyed about this novel is that Cassie is not an omniscient narrator. She doesn't know what is going on all the time. She's human and gets misled and even hindsight doesn't always make everything clear. I like Ms. French's style of characterization. ( )