The Likeness by Tana French *** (of 4)

On the upside, Tana French writes with such apparent ease that putting down one of her books requires an act of will.  Her characters are richly nuanced with ambition, self-doubt, workplace conflict, fatigue, frustration, and desire.  In short, she puts onto paper people who are a lot like us.  Her plots truck along and her sense of Ireland's suburban landscape and modern Irish women and men navigating their newfound place in a global economy feels like we are on holiday with an expert tour guide.

On the downside, Cassie Maddox, this book's lead detective finds herself amidst a plot that is largely unbelievable.  A dead body appears in an abandoned farmhouse whose looks are identical to Cassie's.  Identical?  Moreover, the ID found on the body is an ID that Cassie once used as an alias while working undercover.  So back undercover she goes, assuming the name of the old alias, Lexie Madison, and the personality of the dead woman to join a household where Lexie was once living, and where the housemates don't know for certain that she is dead.  Cassie, now Lexie, resumes her life with four college students, all of whom are so intellectual that they have foresworn their previous lives to form a commune-for-eternity on a hill in a town where no one likes them.  Cassie is wired so her cop friends can listen in as together they search for the killer except when Cassie inexplicably removes the wire to defy her police superiors.

In sum, a not-as-good-as-her-first, In the Woods, but still a decent enough read.