kidchamp dot net

09.14.10

THUNDERTOME: ROUND 24

SURVIVOR: black swan green (david mitchell)*
CHALLENGER: the likeness (tana french)

if i had venture capital and/or an intense desire to get into the film business burning a hole in me, i'd waste no time optioning tana french's books. my film version of the likeness, her second novel, would pack the theaters with every conceivable demographic: i'd have a crackling undercover murder investigation for the thriller fans, a stroll through the political history of irish landlords and tenants for the history buffs, a love story for the romantics, and a big old georgian house that would charm the shit out of everyone. for good measure i'd detonate megan fox at the end, and then i would go swimming in my silo of money.

french's first novel, the (THUNDERTOME alum) in the woods, introduced rob ryan, an angsty irish homicide detective with a freaky past and a feisty, pixieish, crappy-old-vespa-ridin' partner. said partner, cassie maddox, is the sequel's main character; after her adventures with rob, she transfers to the domestic violence squad, which is where the likeness finds her, literally and figuratively. a dead girl turns up in a famine cottage outside a small village, you see, and the ID at the scene says she's lexie madison, the fictional college student cassie impersonated when she was an undercover agent years ago. she's cassie's spitting image, so the irish police decide to pretend the dead girl survived her wounds, train cassie to impersonate her apparent impersonator, and send her into lexie's old life to find her killer. it's a ludicrous premise, but it's a stunt worth following: french spends at least a hundred pages reliving the bad old days of cassie's first stint undercover and retraining her to slip into someone else's skin. as in her debut, french's ant-farmer attention to her characters' emotional antennae is a thing of meticulous beauty; i can't think of another genre writer (and only a few writers of any sort) with her talent for building interpersonal tension one hair at a time. she's either the best coffee date ever or the worst frenemy i can imagine. as she made me use the word frenemy (the mexicorn of relationship discussions) in mixed company, i'm going with the latter for now - but either way, she's a fine read.

VICTOR: black swan green, but mitchell will sweat over french's last moments for weeks.

imaginary reading group discussion questions

01 would megan fox be difficult to detonate? how would you go about it?

02 do you think you'd be a good undercover officer?

03 which writers do you associate with supermeticulous interpersonal tension?

04 is there a neologism you hate as much as i hate mexicorn?

05 seriously, want in on this GRAVITY'S RAINBeh business? it will be the best reading group ever.

*previous battle here.