I finished reading Tana French's In the Woods last week. For me it was one of those near perfect reading experiences, where the author gets just about everything right--an intricate suspenseful plot, finely developed characters and all nicely paced (and I should mention really good writing!). You want to speed to the end to see what happens, yet you want to go slowly, too, as you don't want to miss anything along the way. Tana French simply knows how to tell a really good story, and while it might not necessarily be an edge of your seat type thriller, it's so completely absorbing you don't want to set it down either. I'm a little reluctant to write about it, though, as it's the sort of book where the less you know about it beforehand the better.
You probably already know the premise. Three twelve-year-olds go into the woods to play one day and don't come out. This is the 80s, so really bad things don't often happen (or is that a nostalgic view?), and when the hue and cry is finally raised only one boy is found--his back up against a tree, nails dug in tightly, and the inside of his shoes sodden with blood. Nothing else. There is no sign of his friends and his memory is totally blank. Flip forward twenty years and that boy is now a detective on the Dublin murder squad, living an entirely different life under a new name.
By chance Detective Ryan and his partner Cassie Maddox land their first big murder case involving another 12-year-old from the same housing estate where Ryan lived as a boy. The murder is eerily reminiscent of those twenty years earlier. This time the body of girl has been left on the site of an archaeological dig adjacent to the woods where the others went missing. Despite his own connections with the earlier case and the possibility the two cases may be related, Ryan and Maddox become almost obsessively involved with finding the murderer. It nearly takes over their lives as they delve into the sad history of the girl and her dysfunctional family.
There's so much more I could say, but I hate giving any more of the plot away. When I get wrapped up in a really good story I tend to forget to look at how the author is constructing the story and all the other little details about the novel that can be so revealing. It took me a while to realize that the story is written in first person, and the more I read the more I wondered how reliable the narrator was. In any case it was very effectively done as it all brought home to the reader just how uncertain everything was, particularly events in the past and how or if they had anything to do with those in the present. Along with being your standard police procedural and psychological thriller it was also a meditation on identity and memory.
I think what I especially liked about the story was how plausible it seemed. Rob Ryan tells you what happened, and you believe him. I did, anyway. Had there been a copy of French's next novel, The Likeness on the library shelves when I went last week I would have grabbed it. I'm not sure I want to wait in line for a copy or buy it in cloth, however, so I will likely wait until it comes out in paperback in May. Can she possibly top In the Woods, I wonder? I've also heard she's working on a third book as well. Needless to say I was impressed this was a first novel and am looking forward to reading more.