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The Secret Place

Dublin Murder Squad Detective Frank Mackey (Faithful Place) and his daughter Holly are back. Years have passed and now Holly is all grown up and in high school at St. Kilda’s, a private all girls’ school in a quiet, leafy suburb of Dublin. Holly and her best friends Julia, Becca and Selena are living together in the dorms and thrilled to be at boarding school away from the boring chores and rules of home. But the peace is shattered when a violent crime takes place on the grounds of the school—the handsome and popular Chris Harper is found murdered on campus and the police are stumped.

Detective Stephen Moran is tired of working on Cold Cases and desperately wants to be a part of the Murder Squad. Everything changes for Moran when Holly visits him months after the murder and hands him a plain white card that says only: I know who killed him. Holly says she found the card pinned to a photo of Chris Harper at “The Secret Place,” a bulletin board on the top floor of the school where the girls can anonymously post what’s on their mind. Normally a collection of who-likes-who and high school gossip, a link to the unsolved murder of a teenage boy is the last thing Detective Moran expects to find there.

Joined by the notoriously abrasive Lead Detective Antoinette Conway, Moran begins by interviewing the St. Kilda’s girls. But as Chris’s various romantic relationships with the girls at St. Kilda’s come to light, Detective Moran finds he must also decipher the unwritten code of friendship and loyalty. Suspenseful, engaging and refreshingly honest, Tana’s latest mystery is a fantastic addition to the Dublin Murder squad series.