Faithful Place (2010)

Faithful Place is a 2010 crime novel by Tana French. The book is set in Dublin, featuring undercover detective Frank Mackey, who was a supporting character in French's previous novel, The Likeness. It is the third installment of French's loosely related Dublin Murder Squad series. Each follows a case in the heart of Ireland, with overlapping, complex characters that get involved in cases tied to their pasts.

Plot

In December 1985, 19-year old Frank Mackey plans to run away to London with his girlfriend Rosie Daly to escape the recession and poverty running rampant throughout Ireland, and Rosie’s father, who violently disapproves of their relationship. Frank plans to meet her at midnight at the top of the Faithful Place cul-de-sac in the Liberties, the working-class Dublin neighborhood where they both live. When Rosie doesn’t show up, Frank looks for her in the abandoned tenement house at 16 Faithful Place, where he finds a note from Rosie apologizing for leaving without him. Heartbroken, he leaves the note behind and departs on his own.

22 years later, Frank has become a respected detective on the Undercover squad of the Dublin police, and is divorced from his estranged wife Olivia. His weekend with his nine-year old daughter Holly is interrupted by a phone call from his sister Jackie, who informs him that some builders stripping 16 Faithful Place for parts have found Rosie’s suitcase hidden behind a fireplace. Frank returns home for the first time in over two decades, and is reluctantly reunited with his family — his alcoholic father, who violently abused the rest of the family throughout Frank’s childhood, and now suffers from back problems and ill health; his emotionally abusive mother; older sister Carmel, now a married mother of four; older brother Shay, a bike shop worker living above their childhood flat; younger brother Kevin, a TV salesman juggling multiple girlfriends; and younger sister Jackie, a hairdresser and the only member of the family with whom Frank is still in contact.

Frank confirms that the suitcase is Rosie’s, and spends the night on his parents’ sofa bed, wondering if this means Rosie didn’t abandon him after all, an event that shaped all of Frank’s future relationships and life choices. In the morning, he and Kevin meet with Rosie’s parents and younger sister Nora, who ask him to investigate despite the Daly family’s longstanding feud with the Mackeys. Frank surreptitiously takes their fingerprints and thinks back to the last time he saw Rosie, the day before they were set to depart. Frank interviews Rosie’s childhood friend Mandy and works out the route Rosie would have used to sneak out, then explores 16 Faithful Place, which used to be a hangout for local neighborhood kids. He summons police technicians, who uncover Rosie’s skeletal remains underneath a heavy concrete slab in the basement.

Mick ‘Scorcher’ Kennedy, a Murder squad detective and longtime rival of Frank’s, is assigned to the case. He takes Frank’s statement in a local pub and warns Frank to stay out of the way of his investigation. Frank thinks back to the night he and Rosie made their final plans to leave, a week before her disappearance. He is joined by his siblings, who drink with him and attempt to comfort him. They discuss the looming economic recession, and Shay reveals his plans to buy the bike shop where he works. Eventually, Shay, who always bullied Frank as a child and resents him for leaving after he and Carmel protected the younger children from their father’s worst abuses, nearly provokes a fight. Frank declares that he never returned home because he was ashamed of his family and believes they were the reason Rosie left, then storms out in a drunken rage, planning never to return.

Frank goes behind Scorcher’s back to meet with Cooper, the police pathologist, who informs him that Rosie was killed by someone who grabbed her by the throat and slammed her repeatedly against a wall. He picks up Holly from Olivia’s and apologizes to both of them for his absence, and spends the rest of the day with her and Jackie while dodging several calls from Kevin. The next day, Jackie calls him in hysterics to report that Kevin is dead, having gone out the top window of 16 Faithful Place and broken his neck. Scorcher shows Frank the first half of the note that Rosie left, which was found on Kevin’s body, and which makes clear that the entire note was meant for her family, indicating Rosie did plan to leave with Frank before being killed. Frank suspects someone pushed Kevin out the window and planted the note on his body, but Scorcher believes Kevin killed Rosie and committed suicide rather than wait for the investigation to expose him.

Taking vacation time from his job, Frank convinces Stephen Moran, a rookie detective assigned to the case, to secretly feed him information behind Scorcher’s back. He attends Kevin’s wake and has a heart-to-heart with Carmel before his father gets drunk and nearly comes to blows with Rosie’s father, Matt Daly. Frank takes his father into the backyard and bitterly reminisces with him, then drives to Olivia’s to discuss Kevin’s death. Their conversation is interrupted by Holly, who breaks down in hysterics when she hears that Kevin is dead, and Frank realizes that Olivia and Jackie have been allowing her to spend time with his family behind his back for the last year. He confronts Olivia, who apologizes but confronts Frank with the truth that one of the reasons they divorced is that he never got over Rosie leaving. He spends the night in the guest bedroom and talks with Holly the following morning, learning to his surprise that his family went out of their way to make her feel welcome.