The Secret Place

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What to expect

'A gripping read for those still pining for GONE GIRL' Elle's top five beach reads

The photo shows a boy who was murdered a year ago.
The caption says, 'I KNOW WHO KILLED HIM'.

Detective Stephen Moran hasn't seen Holly Mackey since she was a nine-year-old witness to the events of Faithful Place. Now she's sixteen and she's shown up outside his squad room, with a photograph and a story.

Even in her exclusive boarding school, in the graceful golden world that Stephen has always longed for, bad things happen and people have secrets. The previous year, Christopher Harper, from the neighbouring boys' school, was found murdered on the grounds. And today, in the Secret Place - the school noticeboard where girls can pin up their secrets anonymously - Holly found the card.

Solving this case could take Stephen onto the Murder squad. But to get it solved, he will have to work with Detective Antoinette Conway - tough, prickly, an outsider, everything Stephen doesn't want in a partner. And he will have to find a way into the strange, charged, mysterious world that Holly and her three closest friends inhabit and disentangle the truth from their knot of secrets, even as he starts to suspect that the truth might be something he doesn't want to hear.

From the multi-award-winning author of Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller In the Woods, The Secret Place is a searing novel of psychological suspense.

(P)2014 Hodder & Stoughton

Critics Review

An absolutely mesmerizing read
Gillian Flynn, author of GONE GIRL
I've been enthusiastically telling everyone who will listen to read Tana French
Harlan Coben
The thing Tana French does better than almost any living crime writer is create suspense. She makes you feel as if you're the detective, and your whole future career, not to mention your mental equilibrium, depends upon working out the solution to the puzzle. The Secret Place is another nail-biting ordeal of mysteriousness that will have readers frantically turning pages in their eagerness to discover the truth
Sophie Hannah, bestselling author of The Carrier
A gripping read for those still pining for Gone Girl
ELLE’s Top Five Beach Reads
A wonderfully tender and savage thriller about loyalty, teenage friendship and first loves. Gripping and ingenious
Kate Mosse, bestselling author of Labyrinth
She's a seriously talented writer and I love her Dublin Murder Squad series. I've been eagerly awaiting this one for ages.
Observer
It's terrific - terrifying, amazing, and the prose is incandescent
Stephen King, No. 1 bestselling author

User Reviews

Book 3.0
Narration 5.0
3.0
5.0
I listened to the end as I wanted to know the culprit but I found it rather long-winded, maybe because the psychology of teenage girls was too convoluted for me and outside my experience. But on another level this is about friendship and its qualities - loyalty, intimacy, solidarity, mutual protection, a defence against loneliness....and the question of how long these endure and what might threaten them. The teenage drama is balanced against that of the adult investigators with the power play of gender throughout.
jackdor 05/07/2025

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