Cal Hooper is a retired American police officer now living in a remote Irish village. Readers first met Cal in The Searcher, where he conducted an unofficial investigation on behalf of Trey, a teenage girl in difficult family circumstances. In this book, Trey’s father Johnny returns to the village after a long absence, bringing with him an Englishman claiming ancestral ties to the area and family legends about gold to be found there. This generates excitement in the village, and stirs up a mix of different emotions for Trey.

Gold? Really? Most of the villagers are too savvy to fall for that, and try to turn the situation to their advantage through other means. Trey is up to something, but keeps her thoughts and feelings bottled up. The first half of this book was more of a character-driven drama than a mystery and I was easily distracted. When a body finally showed up, the suspense built and the pace accelerated until all the loose ends were tied up. While I really like the protagonists, this book would have benefited from tighter integration of character development and mystery. ( )

A winner, follow-up to French's The Searcher, in which we learn more about Trey's family situation when her long absent father returns to a lukewarm welcome, with a scheme that aims to involve the whole town in an enterprise Cal is certain will come to no good. Every conversation in it is full of subtext, sometimes to the detriment of the narrative flow when a character ruminates on what So-and-So was actually saying. Other than that technique being a bit overdone, I loved the way the Irish modes of expression worked here, especially in pub scenes. Grand. ( )

This is the second of the Cal Hooper series, though I think it could be named the Trey Reddy series. Trey is the teenage girl from the last novel who was hunting for her missing brother, Brendan. That novel ended in moral ambiguity in that it is suggested that Brendan died at the hands of the men from the village in an altercation over Brendan getting involved in narcotics.

Cal had taken Trey on as a carpentry apprentice and is committed to helping her overcome the rough circumstances of her childhood. He's also started a relationship with Lena, a widow who by choice lives on the periphery of the town's social hierarchy. Both Cal and Lena are committed to Trey's well being, when Johnny Redding, Trey's absent father waltzes back into town after a 4 year absence. He has a get rich scheme to sell the town in which they are to dupe a rich Londoner into gold speculation. In reality it's a sting operation with a lot of twists and turns.

Trey, seeking revenge for Brendan's death thinks she sees a way to get back at the townsmen responsible for Brendan's death and retaliation at her father as well. Cal and Lena try hard to protect Trey, but she resists their help until a critical juncture.

The long, dry, hot summer is critical to the atmosphere of the story and contributes to the twist at the end. This is another one that ends with moral ambiguity, which I suspect will be the hallmark of the Cal Hooper series. ( )

I waited for such a long time for her next novel. While I enjoyed revisiting Cal and Trey I deeply missed that intense psychological atmosphere that seemed to be missing from this one. A pity. ( )

After The Searcher, this was something of a disappointment. It felt like the writer had a nugget of an idea that would allow the original characters to continue, but about halfway through it felt forced. And it seemed the characters behaviors and thinking just served to get us to the end of the story. Sorry, I wanted to like it. ( )