The Keeper

This is the third in the Cal Hooper series, but it can be read independently. Cal, a former Chicago detective, has retired to a quaint village in Ireland called Ardnakelty. Engaged to a local woman, he is slowly fitting in to the culture of the village and being accepted by the locals.

Rachel, a young woman engaged to the scion of the local “boss,” is found dead in the river. Was it an accident, suicide, or murder? Rumors, accusations, and fears abound. The town becomes divided into factions. The tension and action escalate, and relationships and lives are endangered.

The book is long and a bit of a slow burn, but French’s knack for storytelling is so good that I was mesmerized by it. She conveys a good feel for the rural Irish show more life, its traditions, mores, unspoken social code, and the various colorful characters that make up a small village.

I enjoy this series, watching the evolution of Cal’s adjustment to life as he navigates the challenges of life in Ardnakelty. French’s descriptions are so immersive that not only can you visualize this village, you can smell it and taste the food. Yes, this is a mystery, but also a very good, literate story.

Thanks to @NetGalley and @VikingBooks for the DRC. show less

An awesome finish to Tana French's trilogy. I didn't love the first book but the second and third were as good as her Dublin Murder Squad series. There are multiple people to keep track of here, and there is the collective consciousness of the inhabitants to be dealt with.

The townland will run its own investigation, spreading unseen below the official inquiry like ancient trailways underlie the brash modern roads; it’ll reach its own conclusions, and deal out its own justice.

At the center of the town's own investigation is former Chicago cop Cal Hooper. He's done his best to lay low and fit in as well as he can. It taken him years to put his finger on the pulse of the locals. They have never forgotten their history

It took him a while

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to start understanding that their tie to their land is different not in its intensity but in its nature: rooted thousands of years deep, through strata of dispossession, famine, bloody rebellion. This land has been reclaimed, not claimed, and that changes things. The ferocity of their possession may not display itself in brandished shotguns and yelling dogs, but it’s built into every cell, latent and ineradicable, ready to rise when it’s needed again.

Turns out there is a lot more at stake than the death of one young woman, and the locals don't take any threat to their land well.

I could paste half the book, but I won't. I'll just say the writing is gorgeous at times, and in places reminded me of James Joyce. (The good stuff, not the stream of consciousness stuff.)

Cal can feel the miles of it around him on every side: snow falling on Ardnakelty, on the fields and the scattered rooftops, into the crevices of the drystone walls, on the backs of the patient cattle, over the curled small creatures and the seeds that wait deep underground for spring.

I can't wait to see what she writes next. show less

THE KEEPER by Tana French is the last book in her Cal Hooper trilogy, and I was both excited, curious, and more than a little sad to read the last of Cal. He has become one of my favorite characters with his jaded perspective, standoffish nature, and gentle parenting of Trey. He is a mix of contradictions, but they all work in tandem to create someone you know is truly a good person.

If the first two books were about Cal's status and frustration with that status as an outsider, THE KEEPER is about the fact that, despite being there for only three years, he is as enmeshed in Ardnakelty's inner workings as he will ever be. It comes as a rude awakening for him and for Lena, and most of the novel is about both of them coming to grips with show more what that means for themselves as individuals and as a couple.

As an insider, Cal no longer has to pick his way around topics or work to earn the trust of the townspeople, but he still has to maneuver his way around small-town politics and the changing dynamic of small towns across Ireland. To see Cal in the exact opposite position he was in during the first two novels is fascinating because it shows that some things, like the fact that he still needs to feel his way around any given situation, never change.

Unlike the first two books, we also see more of Ardnakelty society and her relationship with Cal through Lena's eyes. This new perspective sheds fresh light on the sometimes oppressive nature of living in a small, rural town your entire life, the dreams you compromise for a chance at happiness, and the lengths you will go to avoid the same fate as your ancestors before you. We see Lena struggle with Cal's acceptance in the Ardnakelty "brotherhood" and the way he is no longer cautious about what he shares with his friends. I don't always understand Lena's perspective, having never lived in such a small town and having moved way too often for deep roots to grow. It seems to me that many of Lena's problems are of her own making. For a character whom I used to think was pragmatic, steadfast, and resilient, she spends most of THE KEEPER making nothing but decisions based on emotion rather than facts, and dwells in the land of what-ifs instead of reality.

I lost a little of the respect I had for Lena, but Cal still proves himself to be a good guy. He gets involved in the mysterious death of a local young woman because his friends ask him to do so out of concern for certain ramifications of her death. What he uncovers is a lot messier than he ever considered, but he handles himself with the same gravitas and deliberateness that made him so impressive in the first two books. He knows his limits when it comes to Ardnakelty politics and social structure and is not afraid to listen to the advice of those who do. More importantly, he respects tradition and those deep roots that influence every interaction in the town.

Ms. French once again brings a fictional small Irish village to life with her larger-than-life characters and attention to detail. Her use of imagery, especially weather and landscape, not only sets the tone for the story, but it also captures the tension between old ways and new, progress versus stagnation, and the uncomfortable familiarity that comes with everyone around you knowing everything about you and the entirety of your family history. None of the books in the Cal Hooper series is particularly cheerful or even hopeful, and this is especially true of THE KEEPER. There is no winner or loser here, no good guy or bad. Yes, some people do bad things, and others are motivated by greed rather than by the greater good. But THE KEEPER isn't about right or wrong so much as it is about the inevitability of progress and how progress means something different to everyone.

While I believe THE KEEPER is the weakest of the three Cal Hooper novels, I say that only because Lena's part of the story confounded me. I didn't understand her misery or her fears and found her entirely too unsympathetic. Whereas Cal and his pub crew remain as endearingly old-fashioned and full of BS as ever. I love those pub scenes where they all give each other shit because they embody friendship so well. I also loved seeing Trey growing and maturing a little while finding her place in the larger world. She has come an even longer way than Cal has, and it is a joy to watch her settling into her skin, making friends, and being the teenager she is.

I think the entirety of the Cal Hooper series is as much about this grizzled American finding his way through the maze that is an Irish village social scene as it is a love letter to those small villages that dot Ireland, but are becoming rarer as Ireland continues to grow and prosper. Ms. French preserves them through her loving but honest depiction of Ardnakelty, complete with quirks, long-standing feuds, an unknowable social hierarchy, and a shared past of British occupation and rule that still affects the townspeople today. I am going to miss Cal and Trey and the rest, but it is Ardnakelty I am going to miss most. show less

I could sit in this atmospheric world for days. This is the 3rd and final novel in French’s trilogy about a retired Chicago cop, Cal Hooper, who has made a tiny Irish town of Ardnakelty his home. We’ve gotten to know his reserved fiancé Lena, and Trey, the troubled teen that’s his surrogate daughter. Tommy is the local big shot in town and he’s challenged when a young woman, Rachel, turns up dead. Mrs. Duggan is a wildly enthralling character, driven by selfish desires. The amount of politics that are handled over a cup of tea or a G&T are shocking. I never get tired of her writing. This one is so good I immediately wanted to reread The Searcher. It’s just a world you can sit in, quietly exploring the social dynamics with show more stakes, both big and small. I love seeing each of the characters develop and find themselves changing and needing others as the story progressed. I felt like the ending was perfectly satisfying and open ended. show less

The latest (and possibly the last?) Cal Hooper adventure. A page turner, as French's books tend to be. Absolutely terrific scenes of interaction among the characters, particularly groups of men in pubs...sometimes laugh-out-loud funny. Which helps buffer the perfectly awful events and situations the book is "really" about---a young woman's murder or suicide (not clear right up to the end); a manipulative, conniving, vaguely Trump-like villain who is used to having everything his own way and gets ugly when defied; a baffling break-down in communications in Cal's relationship with Lena; another death that is unquestionably murder meant to look like an accident. I enjoy French's writing style and story-telling a LOT, but I usually feel her show more books could be 100 pages shorter. I expect she's having as much fun keeping company with her characters as I do, and hates to leave them, but... show less

The worthy and heartbreaking tribute to small town rural Ireland is a memorable gem. Cal, our detective from Chicago, is finally feeling accepted by Ardnakelty, he is engaged to Lena, and his teenage protege, Trey, is considering a woodworking apprenticeship and her first encounter with love. But then a young woman is found dead in the river and everything falls apart. Cal learns about local bigshot Tommy Moynihan, a developer with intentions, and Lena learns of the equal power held by one old lady, former owner of the general store now run by Lena's sister Noreen, her mother-in-law Dymphna. As the conflicts between the town and Moynihan and between Lena and Cal escalate, he finds himself at the heart of the violence and the pain caused show more by small-town minds and mouths. French makes Ardnakelty a living, breathing contradiction and Cal the unwilling anti-hero. This is a monumental ending to the series, unspeakably complex and touching, with plot and characters in a race for superiority, ending in a tie. show less

This is the third and last book in a series featuring Cal Hooper, retired after 25 years with the Chicago Police Department and single since his wife Donna left him. Several years ago he bought a fixer-upper home in the [fictional] village of Ardnakelty in the west of Ireland.

He has slowly built a place for himself among his neighbors, working his way inside
“the intricate webs, constructed over centuries, that bind people to one another, to their land, and to their past.”

He has been pitching in with their farm work; his woodworking was now in most of their homes; and he recently got engaged to a local woman, Lena. He also was somewhat of a father figure to Trey Reddy, a 16-year-old local girl who helped Cal with his woodwork. She show more stayed with Cal on weekends on Cal’s pullout sofa so they could work on furniture. This arrangement not only helped give Trey some much-needed income, but allowed Cal to mentor Trey in any way he could. Cal, Lena, and Trey had become a family.

As the story begins, a young woman named Rachel Holohan has gone missing. Rachel had been seeing Eugene, son of Tommy Moynihan, “Mr. Big-Balls” in the townland. [As Wikipedia explains, a townland is a traditional small land division used in Ireland and in the Western Isles of Scotland, typically covering 100–500 acres.]

Most of the town, including Cal, Lena, and Trey went out in the middle of the night to help search for Rachel, eventually finding her body in the river.

The people of Ardnakelty had no interest in taking the issue to the Guards; their isolated location put them very far from the centers of power and lawmaking. In any event, it was hard to know with the Guards whom to trust and who was in someone’s pocket. So they were determined to run their own investigation, reach their own conclusions, and mete out justice accordingly. But many of them also did not want to alienate Tommy by taking any interest in Eugene, a seemingly obvious suspect. Tommy provided a lot of jobs in the community, and had influence with people in power.

Polarizing opinions about what could have happened and what to do about it pitched neighbor against neighbor. Though reluctant to play detective, Cal found himself dragged into the center of the storm. Lena and Trey also got involved, each having their own reasons to determine what took place. Working independently with distinct agendas, Cal, Lena, and Trey finally managed to piece together the truth about Rachel’s fate.

Evaluation: These atmospheric and slow-paced stories are quite different from the author’s popular Dublin murder series, but every once in a while French's prose takes on the sound and rhythm of those books. The Cal Hooper series focuses much less on police procedure. Rather, the crimes are used as lenses to explore life in a community with long-standing power dynamics, loyalties, and feuds, and to expose the fractures in the village as it goes through an uncertain transition to modernity. show less