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Searching... Monmouth Public Library | Fic French, T. 2007 | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
The debut novel of an astonishing voice in psychological suspense
As dusk approaches a small Dublin suburb in the summer of 1984, mothers begin to call their children home. But on this warm evening, three children do not return from the dark and silent woods. When the police arrive, they find only one of the children gripping a tree trunk in terror, wearing blood-filled sneakers, and unable to recall a single detail of the previous hours.
Twenty years later, the found boy, Rob Ryan, is a detective on the Dublin Murder Squad and keeps his past a secret. But when a twelve-year-old girl is found murdered in the same woods, he and Detective Cassie Maddox--his partner and closest friend--find themselves investigating a case chillingly similar to the previous unsolved mystery. Now, with only snippets of long-buried memories to guide him, Ryan has the chance to uncover both the mystery of the case before him and that of his own shadowy past.
Richly atmospheric, stunning in its complexity, and utterly convincing and surprising to the end, In the Woods is sure to enthrall fans of Mystic River and The Lovely Bones .
Author Notes
Tana French grew up in Ireland, Italy, the US and Malawi. She trained as a professional actress at Trinity College, Dublin, and has worked in theatre, film and voiceover. Her first novel, In the Woods, won the 2007 Edgar Award for Best First Novel. Her other books include The Likeness, Faithful Place, Broken Harbor, and The Secret Place. The Trespasser and The Witch Elm made the New York Times bestseller list.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Irish author French expertly walks the line between police procedural and psychological thriller in her debut. When Katy Devlin, a 12-year-old girl from Knocknaree, a Dublin suburb, is found murdered at a local archeological dig, Det. Rob Ryan and his partner, Cassie Maddox, must probe deep into the victim's troubled family history. There are chilling similarities between the Devlin murder and the disappearance 20 years before of two children from the same neighborhood who were Ryan's best friends. Only Maddox knows Ryan was involved in the 1984 case. The plot climaxes with a taut interrogation by Maddox of a potential suspect, and the reader is floored by the eventual identity and motives of the killer. A distracting political subplot involves a pending motorway in Knocknaree, but Ryan and Maddox are empathetic and flawed heroes, whose partnership and friendship elevate the narrative beyond a gory tale of murdered children and repressed childhood trauma. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
The discovery of a body near a spooky wood forces a murder-squad detective in Ireland to confront his own horrific past, in an engrossing if melancholy debut. This mystery, heavy on psycho-drama, is set in the Dublin suburb of Knocknaree and is the first in a sequence to feature detectives Cassie Maddox and Adam Ryan. Adam has hidden his secret from everyone in the police force except his partner and best friend Cassie. She alone knows that he was the surviving child of three who went missing in the wood in 1984. Adam was found clinging to a tree, his shoes full of blood; there was no trace of his pals Peter and Jamie, nor could Adam remember a thing. Now, 20 years on, Katy Devlin's battered body has been found by the same wood, where an archaeological dig is in progress, under threat from plans for a new road. The investigation--Operation Vestal--evokes queasy sensations and flashes of recollection in Adam. The relationship with Cassie goes awry after the two sleep together. Adam eventually solves the Katy Devlin murder, but in this meditation on lost innocence, psychopathology and fear, his success is ruined when his own history emerges, leading to demotion. When not lengthily bogged down in angst, a readable, non-formulaic police procedural with a twist. It's ultimately the confession of a damaged man. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Rob Ryan and his partner, Cassie Maddox, land the first big murder case of their police careers: a 12-year-old girl has been murdered in the woods adjacent to a Dublin suburb. Twenty years before, two children disappeared in the same woods, and Ryan was found clinging to a tree trunk, his sneakers filled with blood, unable to tell police anything about what happened to his friends. Ryan, although scarred by his experience, employs all his skills in the search for the killer and in hopes that the investigation will also reveal what happened to his childhood friends. In the Woods is a superior novel about cops, murder, memory, relationships, and modern Ireland. The characters of Ryan and Maddox, as well as a handful of others, are vividly developed in this intelligent and beautifully written first novel, and author French relentlessly builds the psychological pressure on Ryan as the investigation lurches onward under the glare of the tabloid media. Equally striking is the picture of contemporary Ireland, booming economically and fixated on the shabbiest aspects of American popular culture. An outstanding debut and a series to watch for procedural fans. --Thomas Gaughan Copyright 2007 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
TANA FRENCH promises two whodunits for the price of one in her harrowing first novel, IN THE WOODS (Viking, $24.95), by linking the contemporary homicide of a 12-year-old girl from a small town near Dublin with the misadventures of three children who vanished while playing in the same wooded area 20 years earlier. While French resolves only one of these twinned mysteries, the intricate design of her storytelling is something of its own reward - although that might not appease readers who, having been lured into these thickets, find themselves hanging from a limb. In the view of Rob Ryan, a Dublin detective assigned to investigate the rape and murder of Katy Devlin (whose body is found on the site of an archaeological dig, draped across a Bronze Age sacrificial altar), "this case was too full of skewed, slippery parallels." If anyone has a right to that opinion, it's Ryan, who, unknown to all but his homicide-cop partner, Cassie Maddox, was one of the three playmates who disappeared from the town of Knocknaree in the summer of 1984 - and the only one who returned. Since Ryan never recovered his memory of the ordeal, he's less the omniscient narrator of the story than its flawed subject, a man tormented by a secret he can't recall. Tana French French is a bit too infatuated with her hero, giving as much gravitas to Ryan's sophomoric romping with his tomboyish partner as she does to his speculations about Katy's odd family and unreliable neighbors. But if they don't play well as romantic partners, Ryan and Cassie pull their weight on the job, yielding cleareyed insights into the many layers of life in small Irish towns. The way French tells it, the history of Knocknaree will never be whole until the dual mysteries of Katy's death and the disappearance of the children are resolved. Although she overburdens the traditional police-procedural form with the weight of romance, psychological suspense, social history and mythic legend, she sets a vivid scene for her complex characters, who seem entirely capable of doing the unexpected. Drawn by the grim nature of her plot and the lyrical ferocity of her writing, even smart people who should know better will be able to lose themselves in these dark woods. You know you're reading a Swedish policier when an elderly man disappears and the investigating officer immediately suspects suicide. But the question put to the missing man's daughter - "Has your father shown any signs of depression lately?" - might be asked of any of the characters in THE CRUEL STARS OF THE NIGHT (St. Martin's Minotaur, $23.95), Kjell Eriksson's moving follow-up to "The Princess of Burundi." Although the novel's focus holds steady on police efforts to locate Prof. Ulrik Hindersten when the retired Petrarch scholar vanishes from the house he shares with his daughter, compassionate attention is also paid to the other aged victims of an unknown serial killer - including one old farmer who was indeed contemplating suicide and left behind a plaintive note asking that someone care for the beloved maple tree on which he intended to hang himself. Not even the cops are exempt from the autumnal melancholy that pervades the story, with Detective Ann Lindell acknowledging (in Ebba Segerberg's sober translation) "a nauseating feeling of indifference" and casually writing off October as her "blues month." Why genre readers are tickled by such morbid views of suffering humanity is anyone's guess. Suffice it to say that Eriksson understands the pathology and explores it with the utmost tenderness. Donna Leon is the ideal author for people who vaguely long for "a good mystery," meaning a strong story with discreet violence, a wise detective who doesn't drink or brood too much, and a setting that's worth the visit. That Leon is also a brilliant writer should only add to the consistently comforting appeal of her Venetian procedurals featuring Commissario Guido Brunetti, an immensely likable police detective who takes every murder to heart. As a devoted family man, Brunetti is profoundly shaken by the baby-snatching case he encounters in SUFFER THE LITTLE CHILDREN (Atlantic Monthly, $24), and the sympathy he feels for the distressed father, a pediatrician at a local hospital, only intensifies when Brunetti learns that the baby was acquired through an illegal adoption. Even as this case is pursued to its bitterly sad ending, Leon allows her warmhearted detective to take what solace he can from the beauty of his city and the homely domestic rituals that give him the strength to go on. Ruth Dudley Edwards's rollicking satirical mysteries have heretofore been confined to the British Isles, but now that MURDERING AMERICANS (Poisoned Pen, $24.95) has gotten around to American academia, we can expect to hear howls from the heartland. Through some colossal error in administrative judgment, a liberal arts college in Indiana has invited Baroness Ida Troutbeck, the foul-mouthed, politically iconoclastic and altogether endearing heroine of this series, to grace its campus as a visiting professor. Once in residence, Lady Troutbeck (who insists on being called Jack) finds reason to investigate the behavior of the school provost and the suspicious death of the woman's predecessor. But the guilty pleasure of this farce is the spectacle of Jack tearing down the precepts of political correctness honored on American campuses, like diversity studies and the tortured nomenclature that designates Indians as "First Citizens." "I like amusing and constructive anarchy," Jack says, pausing in her efforts to stir up a student insurrection. Well, so do we, and no one brings down the temple with more outrageous wit and style than Ruth Dudley Edwards. In her harrowing first novel, set in a small Irish town, Tana French presents two whodunits for the price of one.
Library Journal Review
Three children wander into some woods near Dublin, but only one is found, hysterical and bloodied. Some 20 years later, he's a detective investigating a child's murder in the same woods. Lots of in-house excitement, though one wonders whether Coben (see The Woods, above) and French have talked. With a reading group guide. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.