“The Likeness”, sequel to “In the Woods”

Tara French’s sequel to In the Woods is The Likeness. This book is told from the perspective of Rob’s old partner, Cassie. I think I prefer her since she’s a bit more straightforward, but the fact that there’s a clear difference between the two narrations says a lot about the writer.

The premise of this case is that a dead girl is found who looks exactly like Cassie, and is using the same name that Cassie used years ago when she was undercover. Cassie then goes undercover again as this girl (they pretend that she was only in a coma so her friends don’t suspect anything) to examine her life from the inside and try to find her killer.

As a result there’s a lot of writing about how she created this persona and now she has a life of her own, like the undercover name is a character herself with her own agenda here. Which is interesting and a little irritating since it obscures the fact that this is literally just a name.

What makes this a unique mystery is the fact that In the Woods and most mysteries are focused on the killer and trying to figure out who it is. This story centers around the victim and trying to unravel her past. It’s an interesting angle that not many other authors take. The switch from Murder Squad to Undercover is also interesting as it presents an entirely new set of challenges for the characters. Cassie has to worry about acting the part all the time, not just about finding the murderer hidden in the area.

A couple other characters carry over as well, Sam is also here as the lead detective on the case and as Cassie’s boyfriend. Rob makes a brief cameo and gets mentioned quite a bit, but never directly shows his face. I appreciated that, having the series move on from that first book makes each case separate and capable of standing on their own. It also shows more of the fallout from In the Woods since this is where Cassie has ended up six months after that case.

There’s a bunch of quirky new characters, Frank is Cassie’s undercover boss who pretty much stubbornly does his own thing this entire book. He’s one of those characters silently orchestrating everything in the background, and the reader knows it, but none of the others can do anything about it. There’s also the four students that the victim was living with, and now Cassie has to get along with. Like her previous novel, French gives all of them a distinct personality and individual thought process.

It’s an interesting sequel, not directly sequential, but has ties to several old characters as well as introducing new ones. Personally I like that idea.