[1] The book is set in Dublin, featuring undercover detective Frank Mackey, who was a supporting character in French's previous novel, The Likeness.

When 19-year-old Frank Mackey was left waiting outside of an abandoned house one fateful night, he believed that his lover backed out on their plans of elopement.

[4] The BookScore assessed it at an aggregated critic score of 9.0/10 based on an accumulation of British and American press reviews.

[5] Regina Marler of the Los Angeles Times described the book as "not a page-turner but a page-lingerer" and that "French gives us a clear-eyed portrait of the Liberties as seen through a murder.

"[6] Janet Maslin of The New York Times remarked that "the first thing that Ms. French does so well in “Faithful Place” is to inhabit fully a scrappy, shrewd, privately heartbroken middle-aged man.

Sibling rivalries, class conflicts, old grudges, adolescent flirtations and memories of childhood violence are all deftly embedded in this novel, as is the richly idiomatic Dublinese.