The woman does have a way with words. I think I actually liked this one more than the two that I read back whenever it was. (I just checked - it was back in January of 2011.) I didn't actually reread what I wrote about them, but one I recall was ridiculously improbable, and the other just pretty weird. This one was very Irish, as were the others, but step-by-step the horrors never left the realm of something that could be possible.
As with the others, the central character is an Irish cop - a different one this time - his name seems vaguely familiar, so maybe he was a minor character in the others, or maybe not. As a teenager, Frank plans to run away from a hideous home with his girl, Rosie. He waits for hours at the appointed rendezvous, but she never shows up. At this point, perhaps things do become a little improbable, he gets on a bus and goes from his home suburb to the heart of Dublin and after a period of drugs and petty crime becomes a cop. And for twenty-two years never returns to his home neighborhood. Some fifteen or twenty years later, he encounters his youngest sister after an attempted mugging and they stay in touch.
Then one day she calls him to come home, a suitcase has been found in the abandoned house at the top of the street - and he learns why Rosie didn't meet him on that long ago winter morning.
Faithful Place is the name of the street - and it is indeed faithful to its character. Frank finds himself sucked back into the perversities of the place and its people - everything that drove him away in the first place.
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