The Likeness

Tana French

The Likeness

Tana French

Viking

VIKING

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

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First published in 2008 by Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

PUBLISHER'S NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

French, Tana.

The likeness / Tana French.

p. cm.

ISBN: 1-4362-2829-8

1. Women detectives--Ireland--Fiction. 2. Murder--Investigation--Fiction. I. Title.

PR6106.R457L55 2008

823'.92--dc22

2008003940

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Also by Tana French

In the Woods

For Anthony, for a million reasons

Prologue

Some nights, if I'm sleeping on my own, I still dream about Whitethorn House. In the dream it's always spring, cool fine light with a late-afternoon haze. I climb the worn stone steps and knock on the door--that great brass knocker, going black with age and heavy enough to startle you every time--and an old woman with an apron and a deft, uncompromising face lets me in. Then she hangs the big rusted key back on her belt and walks away down the drive, under the falling cherry blossom, and I close the door behind her.

The house is always empty. The bedrooms are bare and bright, only my footsteps echoing off the floorboards, circling up through the sun and the dust motes to the high ceilings. Smell of wild hyacinths, drifting through the wide-open windows, and of beeswax polish. Chips of white paint flaking off the window sashes and a tendril of ivy swaying in over the sill. Wood doves, lazy somewhere outside.