To those complaints, I say this is a great introduction to the world of Tana French. People make so many complaints about this book-mainly its main character is unlikeable, its mysteries are left unsolved, and the story itself is too long. When he was a boy, the woods ate up three of his friends, leaving him terrified and holding onto a tree like the world was shaking around him, wearing blood-filled sneakers. Detectives Rob Ryan and Cassie Maddox investigate a girl murdered in the woods. In the Woods, French’s first novel and the first of the Dublin Murder Squad series, was released in 2007.
Careful: bees zip in and out of cracks in the leaning oak stop to turn any stone and strange larvae will wriggle irritably, while an earnest thread of ants twines up your ankle.” Its silence is a pointillist conspiracy of a million tiny noises- rustles, flurries, nameless truncated shrieks its emptiness teems with secret life, scurrying just beyond the corner of your eye. Setting: “The wood is all flicker and murmur and illusion. It is the core of our careers, the endgame of every move we make, and we pursue it with strategies painstakingly constructed of lies and concealment and every variation on deception.”Ĭharacters to know: Detectives Rob Ryan and Cassie Maddox. Our relationship with truth is fundamental but cracked, refracting confusingly like fragmented glass. “ What I warn you to remember is that I am a detective. Much like real life, this shows how easy it is to put people in boxes until we take a look under their skin, and see what exactly makes them tick, or see what makes them quake in bed at night.
At the end of this week I’ll do a second post, for those eager to know more about the new book, with a more detailed The Secret Place review.Ī big part of the suspense surrounding each new Dublin Murder Squad book is wondering who French will choose to write about next, as her characters rotate through the books in an addictive style-detectives touched upon in a previous book will grab an unseen wand and take their turn as protagonist as if French is having them all run a relay race.
Each of her new Dublin Murder Squad series grabs a character from the last and spins off, in a wildly different environment but with an equally ominous tone.Īs The Secret Place was released yesterday, the fifth in the series, I’m going to devote this week to Tana French, starting with a summary of all the books today, for those starting The Secret Place and realizing they need a refresher on all the past drama, or for those hearing some of the hype surrounding The Secret Place and wondering what the Dublin Murder Squad books are all about. Tana French is one of my favorite living mystery authors, as her literary mysteries elevate the genre to a new level.
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