Rob Ryan is a member of the Dublin Murder Squad and memories come flooding back to him when a 12-year-old girl is found murdered in the same woods he played in long ago. As the case progresses, an experience from his youth is infusing itself into his investigation. May remind readers a bit of Mystic River.

As elegant and relentless as a Greek tragedy. ( )

Summary: Twenty years ago, three twelve-year-old children ran off to play in the woods near their Dublin suburb. When they don't return home, a search party is mounted, and only one of the children is found, digging his fingernails into a tree trunk in terror, his t-shirt torn in four diagonal slashes, wearing sneakers filled with someone else's blood, and with absolutely no memory of whatever happened to him and his friends. That boy has grown up to be Detective Rob Ryan, and although he has never recovered his memories, he's not particularly traumatized by the event, and he works on the Murder squad with his partner Cassie Maddox with nary a problem. That is, until they get handed a case of a young girl found murdered at an archaeological dig... in the same woods where his childhood friends went missing. Although two decades separate the cases, Ryan can't quite shake the conviction that they're connected... and that the latest murder will wind up rattling everything in his life that he had previously thought was stable.

Review: This book affected me more profoundly than anything I've read for a long time. I read the first half of the book relatively slowly, taking my time and savoring French's wonderful way with the language, but then I sat and read the entire second half of the book in one evening... and it may have been the fact that I was up way past my normal bedtime, or the fact that I had been sitting still for so long, or my scratchy contacts, or something, but man, the last hundred pages just absolutely wrung me out, left me feeling sad and heavy and hollow, and with a sore throat like I'd been holding back tears for a few hours. That's not something I expect from a mystery (not something I expect from any book ever, really), but here's the thing: relatively little of that feeling had to do with the actual mystery itself.

The wonderful thing about this novel is that while it's ostensibly a mystery, it's really a character-driven story dressed up in a mystery's clothing. I fell in love with Ryan and Maddox very soon after meeting them, and watching the ways the investigation affected them was far more compelling than watching the investigation itself. It's not that the murder case wasn't interesting - I'll cop to watching the odd episode of a police procedural now and again, and In the Woods's case was well-done, with all of the clues on the table and the solution complex enough not to be obvious, but not so complex as to be implausible. It's just that Ryan and Maddox are the heart of the story, and they're enough to keep things ticking along during the inevitable part where the investigation stalls out - in fact, the only parts I thought dragged were the parts where the focus was too much on the details of the police work and not enough on the people doing it. Likewise, the murder is essentially solved with almost 100 pages left in the book, but it doesn't feel like French is dragging out the denoument - because while the murder's over, the story wasn't. The ending didn't leave me completely satisfied, but it didn't exactly leave me dissatisfied, either, and I can see that other ways of wrapping things up wouldn't have had the same narrative power... And judging by how I felt when I finished, power is one thing In the Woods has in spades.

Another thing Tana French has in abundance is a flair for wordcraft. It's very rare that I write down quotes from the book I'm reading, but this book made me want to. The only reason I didn't is that I realized by page 20 that there was a paragraph I wanted to copy out verbatim from every page, and that by spending the time copying them down, I was missing out on actually reading them. There's something about French's language that is so beautiful and evocative that you just want to roll around in it, let it sit on your tongue and in your brain, wrap yourself up in it like a pile of warm laundry. I can't quite believe that a story this well crafted and this evocatively written is a first novel - but it is, and I will absolutely be reading the rest of French's work. 4.5 out of 5 stars.

Recommendation: Between this and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, I'm starting to rethink my aversion to detective mysteries. Although they've got some differences, if you like one, I think you'll like the other, and if you like your stories character-driven, I bet you'll like both, no matter what your favorite genre. ( )

I am not sure where to begin with this review. In the Woods is not a mystery that had me rushing to turn the pages. Rather, I wanted to take it slow and savor every word. Tana French is a beautiful writer who appears to take great care with each word she writes.

The novel is dark and the subject matter heavy. A young girl is found murdered at an archeological site in Knocknaree, Ireland, and detectives Rob Ryan and Cassie Maddox are assigned to investigate. Detective Ryan knows he should not be on the case. At the age of 12, he had been the only one found after the disappearance of him and his two best friends in the very woods where Katy’s body was discovered. His shoes were filled with blood, and, to this day, he has no memory of what happened that fateful day. His past has haunted him off and on all his life, and suddenly, it is placed front and center. He wants to remember. And he and Detective Maddox, one of the few who knows about his past, are determined to discover whether a link between the twenty year old disappearances has anything to do with the recent murder.

Tana French’s gift lies not just in crafting an utterly intriguing story, but also in creating characters that are complicated and very much three dimensional, from the big players in the novel to the minutest of characters. The author did an amazing job of capturing the stress and tension an ongoing and high profile investigation like Katy’s murder brings with it. It weighed heavily on everyone involved, including the protagonist and his partner. The longer the investigation went on, the more dead ends they encountered, and even the closer they came to the truth, the more strain it put on them.

Ryan and Maddox had an extremely close relationship. The two were like siblings in many ways. They knew each other inside and out. They both carried their own baggage, and while they shared much about themselves, including some of their darkest secrets, they still held a few things back. This bond between them made them even better at their job in many ways, or so it seemed in the beginning.

Part of the reason I decided to read this book when I did was as part of an online book discussion. I got to it a little late, but one of the bonuses of online groups is that the questions and discussion live on after everyone else has set the book aside for something else. I thought about incorporating some of the questions and answers into my review, but that really wouldn’t work. Too many spoilers. I will say though that this book makes for good discussion fodder!

The ending seems to be the most controversial part of the book. Many people were left disappointed for reasons I’ll refrain from giving here. I actually quite liked the ending. I wish I could say more because there’s a lot I liked about it, but, well, you know how it goes. A little something called spoilers.

This is one of my shorter reviews for a book that deserves more. I can see why so many people have recommended this book, and you can bet I’m adding my voice to that chorus. ( )

In this mystery a child who vanished with his two closest friends, then reappeared with blood in his shoes, no friends and no memory of what occurred and not speaking, is now a homicide detective and is involved with his partner in an investigation that takes him to the place where the earlier crime occurred. He doesn't know, and for most of the book, we don't know whether the current crime has anything to do with the earlier one. Since his last name is common, and he goes by his middle name rather than the first name that was publicized, only a few people know about his role as victim in the earlier crime, and he chooses not to tell his boss, although his partner knows. Alongside the account of the investigation, there is a parallel account of his relationship with his partner, which is initially almost like brother/sister-like in their closeness, jokes, arguing and support for each other. One thing this book does very well is show someone acting like a jerk in a way that makes sense and still leaves you with a feeling of empathy for the character. This is a very strong first novel and I plan to read French's new book, The Likeness, which has the same two main characters. But the point of view may shift to the female partner. ( )