Dublin Murders adapted for TV from Tana French novels

Big news for Tana French fans! 

Starz acquired from Fremantle the eight-episode drama series Dublin Murders, adapted from Tana French’s novels In the Woods and The Likeness (both available from Penguin Books). Killian Scott (C.B. Strike) and Sarah Greene (Penny Dreadful) lead the cast as detectives Rob Reilly and Cassie Maddox. Production is underway in Belfast and Dublin.

Dublin Murders follows Rob Reilly (Scott) – a smart-suited detective whose English accent marks him as an outsider – who is dispatched to investigate the murder of a young girl on the outskirts of Dublin with his partner, Cassie Maddox (Greene). Against his better judgment and protected by his friendship with Cassie, he is pulled back into another case of missing children and forced to confront his own darkness. As the case intensifies, Rob and Cassie’s relationship is tested to the breaking point and when Cassie is sent undercover for another murder case, she is forced to come face to face with her own brutal reckoning.

Dublin Murders will air on Starz in the U.S. and Canada as well as StarzPlay in Germany, France, Italy and Spain in 2019.

Tana French's The Dublin Murders: BBC

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From In Reference to Murder:

BBC One has given the greenlight to an eight-part crime drama The Dublin Murders, based on Tana French’s award-winning series of mysteries. Sarah Phelps, who recently re-imagined several Agatha Christie novels for the BBC, will adapt the first two books about the fictional Dublin Murder Squad, drawn from French’s In The Woods and The Likeness. Blending psychological mystery and darkness, each novel is led by a different detective or detectives from the same Dublin squad.

Maybe we'll find out what happened in the Woods!!!??

Tana French's Dublin Murder Squad coming to TV

From Deadline:

Euston Films’ Kate Harwood has joined forces with Alan Gasmer and Peter Jaysen of Veritas Entertainment to bring a series of Tana French-penned murder mysteries to the international television market. The Dublin-based French won several literary prizes for her first novel, 2007’s In The Woods, and followed that up with The Likeness and Faithful Place, among others. The partners have optioned the three books which they liken to True Detective.

The novels each follow a different case and include overlapping characters who are alternately in the forefront or the background of the main story. They are set in the fictional Dublin Murder Squad and have sold more than 5 million copies worldwide.

Read more here.

Hope we'll see this made and that we'll get it in the U.S.!

HT: The Rap Sheet via In Reference to Murder

Tana French The Likeness

Just finished The Likeness, and Edgar Award winner Tana French’s second novel is as good or even better than In the Woods, a book that won many mystery awards. Cassie Maddox from In the Woods is at the center of this novel, which is written from a totally different point of view.

It’s said that everyone has a doppelganger, a double, but when a woman is discovered stabbed in a cottage, she not only looks like Cassie, but she is identified as Lexie Madison, an undercover alias created for Cassie a few years before. Although this may sound a bit far-fetched, French treats it so well that it’s the irony of the situation that draws you into the book. Cassie goes undercover again to discover who murdered ‘Lexie Madison’ and who was Lexie Madison. Her discovery is as much about herself as it is about the victim.

This novel is both character driven and plot driven. French does a great job of delineating the four graduate student housemates with their interrelationships, distinct personalities and motivations. The house where these students live is also a character, and the house defines them. Even if you get lost in their idylls, you're back up front and close to center with Cassie, as she searches for the killer of Lexie, who made up the fifth of this ‘merry’ band.

I learned a lot about undercover skills that are integrated, defined and revealed in this book.

The whole plot revolves around the theme of ‘likeness’-- who's who and who you really.

French’s writing style is dense and descriptive. The Likeness is a long book, but one I couldn’t put down. I highly recommend this exceptional mystery.

Read an essay by Tana French from the Mystery Readers Journal.