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.

Stilt traumatisetl by her brush with a psychopath, Detective Cassie Maddox transfers out of the Murder squad and starts a retationship with fettow detective Sam O'Neitt. When he cat[s her to the scene of his new case, she is shqcked to find that the murdered girt is her doubte. What's more, her ID shows she is Lexie Madison - the identity Cassie used,years ago, as an undercover detective.With no reads, no suspects and no ctues to Lexie's rear identity, Cassie's otd boss spots the opportunity of a tifetime: send Cassie undercover in her ptace, to tempt the kitter out of hiding to finish the job.Plenty of murder cases turn into battles of wits, but this was different. My real opponent wasn't the murderer but the victim: perfectly matched against me in every way, too close to call...Tana French fo[tows her stunningty accomptished debut, In the Woods,with an equatty compellting psychotogicat mystery that confirms her ptace as one of the most exciting new voices in crime fiction.