Frank Mackey is back into the fifth book of the Dublin Murders series, and so is the „friend” he has made in „The Faithful Place„, detective Stephen Moran. And you will be glad to meet again Holly Mackey, 16 years old now and boarding the posh school of St. Kilda’s.

The psychology part is now on teenagers and their relationships, be it girl-girl or girl-boy relationships, on the loyalty, bullying, manipulating, dominating … on the fears:

„Be scared you’re fat, be scared your boobs are too big and be scared they’re to small. Be scared to walk on your own, specially anywhere quiet enough that you can hear yourself think. Be scared of wearing the wrong stuff, saying the wrong thing, having a stupid laugh, being uncool. Be scared of guys not fancying you; be scared of guys, they’re animals, rabid, can’t stop themselves. Be scared of girls, they’re all vicious, they’ll cut you down before you can cut them. Be scared of strangers. Be scared you won’t do well enough in your exams, be scared of getting in trouble. Be scared terrified petrified that everything you are is every kind of wrong. Good girl.”

„Someone who doesn’t understand the immensity of what he’s done. He thinks this is nothing. Turning girls from what they are into what he wants them to be, twisting and forcing till they’re nothing but his desires, that’s no big deal: just what they were there for, to begin with.”

You will also find a special place which is not the one in the title, a place of real magic – this combination sounds strange, but… you will see:

„The glade leaps in her mind like a flame; … there, where everything feels clean and straightforward, nothing looks blur-edged and flashed with danger signs.”

The same complicated plots, irony flying in all directions, and more than just a bit of nostalgia for friendships at that age, for the time when we saw the world unfolding before our eyes and the future was still there in front of us.