I will say this, though, the middle dragged on a bit- though the ending completely made up for it. The four chilly, paternal Daniel; handsome and peevish Rafe; the oddball Abby, with a strange fondness for antique dolls; and easily rattled Justin have made a peculiar enough pact to give “The Likeness” some resemblance to Donna Tartt’s “Secret History.” They guard their privacy so closely that it is quite mysterious, even by the standards of college students with active fantasy lives. You go for it in your early drafts. I kept expecting somebody to ring me up and say: ‘You know you had that wolf? And it was the same with Killian. So if she is ever in great danger, the policemen who spy on her as she spies on Whitethorn House may not know she needs rescuing.The conventional approach to this suspenseful setup would have been to make one Whitethorn resident or Glenskehy villager a secretly murderous figure and save the details for a frenzied denouement. The dead young woman was also a student, and she lived with four others in a bizarrely intimate state of camaraderie. Like a fine wine, this murder mystery is to be savored. But the fictitious Lexie Madison is long gone by the time “The Likeness” begins.Except she’s not. I absolutely loved The Likeness.
I found them completely compelling, and within 10 pages I thought, ‘Oh God, I’d really like to work on these.’We had this huge discussion about how it could be done. Her ties to a co-worker who is in love with her are badly strained by her undercover arrangement too.
Detective Cassie Maddox, exhausted and heart-broken after the events of ‘In the Woods‘, has retired from the Murder Squad and has been hiding out in the Domestic Violence division. I give The Likeness 5 stars! I knew everything that I wanted to happen; I’d had a game plan from the start, from the very first opening scene. He was sort of looking down at his notes, and then he was given his cue by the casting director and he looked down the camera and opened his mouth and I said ‘Here’s Rob.’ Casting is like the most deranged game of Jenga ever and it can be a real brain-melter. How do you live with loss? It was a very long shoot, and an exhausting shoot, and a lot of things to contend with — like the weather. However, the ending of the first book in the Dublin Murder Squad series, In the Woods could spell disaster for Dublin Murders and one character in particular. But what really held them together? Her first book was the Edgar-winning “In the Woods,” in which a police detective named Cassie Maddox took on an undercover role. But when the police find the body, presumably before anybody else has, Frank hatches his plan. Based on Tana French’s “In the Woods” and “The Likeness”, Phelps discusses taking the eerie tale from script to screen. The roommates will be told that Lexie has survived the attack and will be returning home soon. How do you live with grief? Tana French on her new book, The Witch Elm, #MeToo, the connection between luck and empathy, and the divisive ending of In the Woods. What went on within their snobbishly tight little clique? The four are glamorous in a standoffish and Secret History -ish sort of way, yet Lexie Madison, the murder victim, had somehow managed to join their ranks. And inside the cottage is Cassie’s dead doppelgänger. Before Cassie goes anywhere, she must be drilled in every known aspect of Lexie’s behavior, even though some identifying traits will be impossible for her to learn.
Ann Donahue Dec 29, 2019 9:00 pm When you’re getting to the end of the road and see it coming, you’re sort of griefstricken that it’s nearly all over — and triumphant at the same time. There was a question — do you do Rob’s story and have Cassie as a secondary figure? Two seem to be particularly prevalent.
Cassie/Lexie will go back to living with them. But at least one housemate must surely be troubled. The usual sequel takes characters from an established book or series and then moves them on toward new adventures.
I said I’d like to put them together because Rob and Cassie are really, really equal. Grade A. Publishers Weekly. The usual sequel takes characters from an established book or series and then moves them on toward new adventures. When that happens, you just want to punch the air for having the greatest job in the world and working with the greatest people in the world. But Lexie was supposed to be a figment of Cassie’s imagination.At the behest of Frank Mackey, Cassie’s acerbic, wisecracking boss and an irrepressible Irish charmer, Cassie is sweet-talked into trying the unthinkable.