Then someone happens to discover Rosie's old suitcase has been crammed inside the chimney of a derelict house on Faithful Place all along, and Frank gets a phone call from one of his sisters with the implication that she may never have made it away from home at all.Īs the investigation of Rosie's murder unravels, the story isn't just about the tragedy of Frank's lost first love but of how the foundation of his entire identity was built on a betrayal that never happened, as well as a bitter distrust of most of his family, whose flagrancy he has always blamed for Rosie seemingly abandoning him.

Frank spent the next twenty-plus years reeling over this rejection in one way or another, becoming the hardened reckless cynic and yet always harboring the slightest hope that Rosie Daly might return to him some day. Only Rosie didn't show up at their meeting place on the night they'd planned, and he always assumed she got cold feet and decided to set out on her own. Frank hasn't been near his family's old flat in the Liberties ever since he was 19 and resolved to escape the confines of abuse and poverty to run away to England with his neighbor and longtime girlfriend Rosie Daly. Frank Mackey is a recurring character in Tana French's Dublin Murder Squad books, a mystery series that tends to be about detectives getting their hearts and heads thoroughly wrecked, and he's first introduced as a cocky and cynical undercover cop in the second book before his character takes over for the proper head-wrecking treatment in the subsequent Faithful Place.

Frank mackey tana french