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In The Woods by Tana French
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In The Woods

by Tana French

Series: Ryan/Maddox (1)

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingConversations
1,6851341,939 (3.77)116

Member recommendations

  1. rbtanger recommends The Little Friend by Donna Tartt, "The similarities between these two books are numerous, in spite of the fact that one takes place in Ireland in the 1980s and one in the 1970s American (see more) South. If you enjoyed one, I think it highly probable you will enjoy the other."
  2. fyrefly98 recommends The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson, "Both are solid, well-written, character-driven detective stories."
  3. kraaivrouw recommends A Darker Domain: A Novel by Val McDermid
  4. amyblue recommends Bone by Bone by Carol O'Connell
  5. VictoriaPL recommends Judas Child by Carol O'Connell
  6. tangentialine recommends The Secret History by Donna Tartt, "Same sense of the mysterious, same sense of intense psychological speculation."
  7. amyblue recommends The Distant Echo by Val McDermid
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English (133)  Danish (1)  All languages (134)
Showing 1-5 of 133 (next | show all)
Ultimately unsatisfying ( )
  karav | Nov 20, 2009 |
2008 - Best First Novel by American Author
  jwcooper3 | Nov 15, 2009 |
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.
  RABooktalker | Nov 11, 2009 |
As elegant and relentless as a Greek tragedy. ( )
  ElizabethHoyt | Nov 2, 2009 |
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. ( )
2 vote fyrefly98 | Oct 20, 2009 |
Showing 1-5 of 133 (next | show all)
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.
 
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Epigraph
Probably just somebody's nasty black poodle. But I've always wondered...What if it really was Him, and He decided I wasn't worth it? -Tony Kushner, "A Bright Room Called Day"
Dedication
For my father, David French, and my mother, Elena Hvostoff-Lombardi
First words
Prologue: Picture a summer stolen whole from some coming-of-age film set in small-town 1950s.
Chapter 1: What I warn you to remember is that I am a detective.
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(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
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Book description

Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0670038601, Hardcover)

A gorgeously written novel that marks the debut of an astonishing new 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.

(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:24 -0400)

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