
In the book 'In the Woods' by Tana French, Detective Rob Ryan and his partner Cassie Maddox are on the hunt for a child killer in the same woods where Ryan's own childhood trauma occurred. The story unfolds with a slow yet intriguing start, weaving a double mystery that keeps readers engaged. The narrative delves into the past and present, exploring themes of psychological tension, guilt, and the complexities of police procedural work. The book is set in Dublin and features atmospheric storytelling that blends elements of romance, violence, and suspense.
The central character, Rob Ryan, grapples with his dark history while investigating the murder of a young girl, drawing parallels to his own childhood tragedy of losing two friends in the same woods. The writing style is praised for its beautiful prose, compelling characters, and intricate plot development that keeps readers riveted. Despite mixed feelings about the ending, readers appreciate the depth of the story and the psychological depth of the characters, making it a compelling read in the Dublin Murder Squad series.
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Sensitive Topics/Content Warnings
Triggers/content warnings include themes of childhood trauma, murder, and psychological distress, particularly surrounding the unresolved childhood case.
From The Publisher:
The bestselling debut, with over a million copies sold, that launched Tana French, author of the forthcoming novel The Searcher and "the most important crime novelist to emerge in the past 10 years" (The Washington Post).
"Required reading for anyone who appreciates tough, unflinching intelligence and ingenious plotting." -The New York Times
Now airing as a Starz series.
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 and stunning in its complexity, In the Woods is utterly convincing and surprising to the end.
Ratings (162)
Incredible (14) | |
Loved It (74) | |
Liked It (34) | |
It Was OK (22) | |
Did Not Like (14) | |
Hated It (4) |
Reader Stats (351):
Read It (169) | |
Currently Reading (1) | |
Want To Read (130) | |
Did Not Finish (5) | |
Not Interested (46) |
6 comment(s)
I don't think Tana French is for me. This is the second book I read from her, but the first I finished. Good writing but I didn't feel interested in the story and was disappointed that it wasn't resolved. Wouldn't be too bad if I had wanted to continue reading the series, but I probably won't.
this being my second tana french book
i can say with authority, she writes complicated protagonists like nobody else
i want to hate this guy but i can't quite make myself do it
she takes the idea of unreliable/reliable narrator and somehow makes it not a binary....how does that happen? somehow the reader takes on the role of reliability
that's what makes the mystery so compelling, because the internal drama of the detectives is just as maddening (in a good way) as the murder plot
her craft is excellent, she's equally as good a writer as anyone on the "literary fiction" shelves
I really enjoyed this moody detective series set in Dublin
If I were awarding stars solely based on the prose quality, I would give In the Woods four stars. Unfortunately, neither the overall plot nor the murder mystery did it for me.
My first impression of Detective Rob Ryan was that he was a jerk, and, by the end of the book, I haven't changed my position. Although Rob shows potential for growth during the course of the narrative, for example, finally delving into his trauma, recommitting himself to self-care, and showing vulnerability, he’s ultimately like, “nevermind,” and reverts back to his douchey ways. I never thought I would be turned off from a murder mystery because of a character’s interpersonal relationships.
The murder mystery is easy to figure out (again, not a flex), and I didn’t like the overreliance on murder mystery tropes.
Additionally, I think the book just does too much. French introduces themes such as misogyny (à la boys will be boys), corruption, preservation, (possibly) environmentalism, urbanization, colonization, childhood, justice, trauma, healing, loss, and love, but never follows through with any of these themes. I’m of the mind that if authors are going to introduce themes, they should deal with them meaningfully; otherwise, they shouldn’t introduce them at all.
Sighing with disappointment, I can only give In the Woods two measly stars.
What I warn you to remember is that I am a detective. Our relationship with truth is fundamental but cracked, refracting confusingly like fragmented glass. It is the core of our careers, the endgame of every move we make, and we pursue it with strategies painstakingly constructed of lies and concealment and every variation on deception. […] What I am telling you, before you begin my story, is this—two things: I crave truth. And I lie.
Entertaining but ultimately unsatisfying; perhaps this just isn’t my genre. Reading
In the Woods is exactly—and I mean
exactly—like watching a British police procedural miniseries. It gives the feeling that one has just binged (and, kudos to the author, I definitely binged this book) a moderately compelling but generally unmemorable episode of Dateline set somewhere on the British Isles and dragged out over a twelve-episode series that looks almost identical to every other British police procedural out there. It is, in short, a competently executed novel that is a bit too long and lacks impactful emotional or thematic throughlines…and only half-delivers on the promises made in the blurb (to be more direct, I'm incredibly irritated that this novel does not tell us
what happened to Rob as a kid
, and it doesn’t appear this comes back in any of the sequels).
It’s the tone: going for that bleak, “unbearably realistic” angle that’s cynical and ultimately lackluster. The mystery is a puzzle to be put together, and just like a puzzle there’s no crazy twist or jaw-dropping moments of surprise at revelations that change everything, just the methodical laying-out of all the pieces and slowly fitting them together with the occasional mild surprise at what matches up where. The final revelations are nicely foreshadowed with varying degrees of obviousness—I honestly can’t believe that it took the detectives so unbearably long to figure out that
the missing trowel was the assault weapon
—and the plot unwinds like one of those old text-based point-and-click PC games where you go talk to this person and that person and work your way down dialogue trees with lots of monologues until you find a clue that leads to the next big break. This is probably how murder investigations actually go, so that’s great, but there really isn’t any tonal variety or change of pace in how the story is told: it’s like running a marathon of clues. The most outlandish thing about the book is the main character’s (Rob’s) selective childhood amnesia, which on its face is pretty unbelievable but it turns out that
it doesn’t really matter that much (for which I’m partly grateful—I can’t stand the amnesia trope when it manifests as the character spending the entire book trying desperately to—or, even more obnoxiously, trying
not to—remember, with the plot only moving forward when they have a sudden memory breakthrough)
, so whatever. I expect that this relentless pursuit of realism is also why
the 1984 disappearances were never explained
, which irritates me since it’s one of the main reasons I kept reading. But, to be honest, I don’t think I would have liked the novel much more even if everything
was wrapped up with a neat little bow.
It’s the dishwater-gray themes: it seems that
some lukewarm attempt was made to comment on the importance of preserving Irish heritage (discussions of Rob’s history and his feelings on his accent, the imminent paving-over of an important archaeological site) and the prevalence of misogyny (exemplified by our main character’s inner monologue on every female character he meets and the various ways he bungles the case), but these are underdeveloped and lack cohesion. One would think that, especially with that title (which makes an obvious, if seemingly unintentional, allusion to fairytales), the author would explore childhood, loss of innocence, the supernatural, disobedience, etc. (all of which, by the way, would neatly have fit into the existing plot), but nothing like this is ever touched on. At its core,
In the Woods really isn’t
about anything. I’ve watched episodes of
Criminal Minds that had more to say than this novel did.
It's the set pieces: the bland office that is the headquarters of every on-screen police department, the dismal Irish countryside, the overcast beaches where the characters walk and talk while collecting shells, the smattering of pubs and houses that are just as one would expect them to be. Every setting is rendered in exact, careful detail, they all feel completely realistic, and they’re all a bit unremarkable. There was some attempt at color by setting the central crime scene among an archeological dig, but even that manages to feel extremely unexceptional (probably because there’s so much talk of the “motorway” that’s going through that it seems like one of the endlessly muddy construction sites that is a crime scene staple).
It's the characters: the lead detective who smokes like a chimney and drinks like a fish and has unresolved childhood trauma that is reopened and predictably sends him into a downward spiral; the female partner who is the emotionally perceptive one and whose relationship with Rob goes exactly as you would expect given the tone; the hot-tempered and intimidating boss who will chew you out but ultimately has your back; a handful of colleagues who are important enough get a name and semblance of a personality; the nameless mass of remaining colleagues who are referred to collectively and bustle around in the background; the parade of suspects and persons of interest who are interviewed and analyzed and interviewed again. The three main detectives are all workaholics and functioning alcoholics who spend their days making quippy remarks in interviews and on drives to interviews and their evenings cooking and drinking together while they talk about the case because they’re now best friends who have no life outside of work. They are well-rounded, but never painted with so fine a brush that they feel like individuals into whom we’re given great psychological insight. This is exemplified in Rob, the main character, who is a bit of an asshole but just not that complicated: the most interesting thing about him is his subtle, unintended misogyny and the way he repeatedly (and I do mean
repeatedly) compares women he finds attractive to
children, which is gross but hardly a unique trait. And neither he, nor any of the other characters, really undergo any changes over the course of the story except in the most superficial ways.
And, more than anything else, and my main criticism, it’s the writing style: generic and bland. There’s
no authorial voice. Despite being told in first person, the prose feels disconnected from the narrative, distant from the reader, and generally detached (and not just because Rob is obviously telling the story with the benefit of foresight). It feels, as mentioned earlier, like watching a television series: there are establishing shots that set the scene and sections of dialogue that usually start off quippy and fun before settling down into long,
long monologues that pause just long enough for a carefully blocked character movement. We even get the play-by-play of news stories that Rob watches. It all feels very
visual and not especially
literary. The moments where I expected French’s stylistic prowess to shine, the moments where we get Rob’s unfiltered thoughts, are equally lackluster. They are less like being inside Rob’s head and diving deep into his psyche and more like Rob hitting the pause button on the action to turn to camera for a long-winded aside about what he thinks of the case or whatever navel-gazing about his past or his problems or his personality he thinks is relevant. As a general rule, we don’t actually get to see him thinking through things, but instead get his thoughts presented straightforward and fully formed, eg
“On the whole I prefer women to men. I also had complicated private insecurities to do with my own place on the squad.” (And I “get it,” Rob is deliberately holding stuff back from the reader, but there are ways to communicate that without sterilizing any sense of personality. A better author would be able to show faint cracks in Rob’s persona to allow readers a peek beneath the surface into what’s really going on with him; French lets him keep us at arm’s length.) There’s
occasionally an interesting thought or vibrant passage that jumps out from the sea of gray, but they were few and far between. The opening paragraph is the most interesting in the book. This efficient, uninspired prose isn’t inherently a problem, except there’s nothing else that I found noteworthy about the story, and the reason I picked up
In the Woods in the first place is because it’s billed as being “gorgeously written” and “lyrical,” and I don’t know what these people are on about.
All of that probably makes it sound like I didn't enjoy
In the Woods and think it's poorly written; neither of those are true. It was competent and readable and kept me entertained, and someone who likes this style of novel would probably love it. It’s just too long and too one-note and it doesn’t really have much to give, not even closure, apart from entertainment. It’s unlikely that I’ll pick anything else up from French.
Some favorite passages:
For about five minutes, as I tried to get the Vespa to start, I fell in love with her. The oversized raincoat made her look about eight, as though she should have had matching Wellies with ladybugs on them, and inside the red hood were huge brown eyes and rain-spiked lashes and a face like a kitten’s. I wanted to dry her gently with a big fluffy towel, in front of a roaring fire. But then she said, “Here, let me—you have to know how to twist the thingy,” and I raised an eyebrow and said, “The thingy? Honestly, girls.”
“I’m fine,” I said. “I just need coffee.” The joy of the new, hip, happening, double-espresso Dublin is that you can blame any strange mood on coffee deprivation. This never worked in the era of tea, at least not at the same level of street cred.
and everywhere else is soupy.” I hadn’t heard the term before, but the view through the Portakabin doors—layers of mud crazed with boot prints, low sagging benches, teetering heaps of farming implements and bicycles and luminous yellow vests that reminded me uncomfortably of my time in uniform—provided a fair explanation.
We think about mortality so little, these days, except to flail hysterically at it with trendy forms of exercise and high-fiber cereals and nicotine patches. I thought of the stern Victorian determination to keep death in mind, the uncompromising tombstones:
Remember, pilgrim, as you pass by, As you are now so once was I; As I am now so will you be.…Now death is un-cool, old-fashioned. To my mind the defining characteristic of our era is spin, everything tailored to vanishing point by market research, brands and bands manufactured to precise specifications; we are so used to things transmuting into whatever we would like them to be that it comes as a profound outrage to encounter death, stubbornly unspinnable, only and immutably itself. The body had shocked Mel Jackson far more deeply than it would have the most sheltered Victorian virgin.
As I closed the door I caught a last glimpse of her through the round window, still sitting straight-backed and motionless with her hands folded in her lap: a queen in a fairy tale, left alone in her tower to mourn her lost, witch-stolen princess.
We work out of the grounds of Dublin Castle, and in spite of all the colonial connotations this is one of my favorite perks of the job. Inside, the rooms have been lovingly refurbished to be exactly like every corporate office in the country—cubicles, fluorescent lighting, staticky carpet and institution-colored walls—but the outsides of the buildings are protected and still intact: old, ornate red brick and marble, with battlements and turrets and worn carvings of saints in unexpected places. In winter, on foggy evenings, crossing the cobblestones is like walking through Dickens—hazy gold streetlamps throwing odd-angled shadows, bells pealing in the cathedrals nearby, every footstep ricocheting into darkness; Cassie says you can pretend you’re Inspector Abberline working on the Ripper murders.
Maybe she, like me, would have loved the tiny details and the inconveniences even more dearly than the wonders, because they are the things that prove you belong.
The trees on the shoulder were glittering with leftover raindrops, and when we got out of the car the air smelled new, washed clean, vital with wet earth and leaves.
one of those deeply unnerving toddlers who look like bonsai adults
I love Sandymount strand. It’s pretty enough on the rare summery afternoons, brochure-blue sky and all the girls in camisoles and red shoulders, but for some reason I love it most of all on your bog-standard Irish days, when wind blows rain-spatter in your face and everything blurs into elusive, Puritan half-tones: gray-white clouds, gray-green sea off on the horizon, great sweep of bleached-fawn sand edged with a scatter of broken shells, wide abstract curves of dull silver where the tide is coming in unevenly.
I coped, in the grand tradition of children everywhere, by retreating into my imagination.
Rosalind had good taste. The Central bar has a stubbornly old-fashioned feel—ceiling moldings, huge comfortable armchairs taking up inefficient quantities of space, shelves of weird old books in elegant bindings—that contrasts satisfyingly with the manic overdrive of the streets below. Sometimes I used to go there on Saturdays, have a glass of brandy and a cigar—this was before the smoking ban—and spend the afternoon reading the 1938 Farmer’s Almanac or third-rate Victorian poems.
I remembered, too, the three of us finding a secret garden, somewhere in the heart of the wood. Behind some hidden wall or doorway, it had been. Fruit trees run wild, apple, cherry, pear; broken marble fountains, trickles of water still bubbling along tracks green with moss and worn deep into the stone; great ivy-draped statues in every corner, feet wild with weeds, arms and heads cracked away and scattered among long grass and Queen Anne’s lace. Gray dawn light, the swish of our feet and dew on our bare legs. Jamie’s hand small and rosy on the stone folds of a robe, her face upturned to look into blind eyes. The infinite silence. I was very well aware that if this garden had existed it would have been found when the archaeologists did their initial survey, and the statues would have been in the National Museum by now, and Mark would have done his level best to describe them to us in detail, but this was the problem: I remembered it, all the same.
How can I ever make you understand Cassie and me? I would have to take you there, walk you down every path of our secret shared geography. The truism says it’s against all the odds for a straight man and woman to be real friends, platonic friends; we rolled thirteen, threw down five aces and ran away giggling.
We lay side by side on the extension roof, hands behind our heads, elbows just touching. My head was still spinning a little, not unpleasantly, from the dancing and the wine. The breeze was warm across my face, and even through the city lights I could see constellations: the Big Dipper, Orion’s Belt. The pine tree at the bottom of the garden rustled like the sea, ceaselessly. For a moment I felt as if the universe had turned upside down and we were falling softly into an enormous black bowl of stars and nocturne, and I knew, beyond any doubt, that everything was going to be all right.
My steps were padded by deep, springy layers of fallen leaves; when I stopped and turned over a chunk with the toe of my shoe, I smelled rich rot and saw dark wet earth, acorn caps, the pale frantic wriggle of a worm. Birds darted and called in the branches, and small warning scurries exploded as I passed.
In all my career I had never felt the presence of evil as I felt it then: strong and rancid-sweet in the air, curling invisible tendrils up the table legs, nosing with obscene delicacy at sleeves and throats.
The summer came to life. It burst from gray to fierce blue and gold in the blink of an eye; the air pealed with grasshoppers and lawnmowers, swirled with branches and bees and dandelion seeds, it was soft and sweet as whipped cream, and over the wall the wood was calling us in the loudest of silent voices, it was shaking out all its best treasures to welcome us home. Summer tossed out a fountain of ivy tendrils, caught us straight under the breastbones and tugged; summer, redeemed and unfurling in front of us, a million years long.
Difficult to read, but well worth it.
About the Author:
Tana French is the author of In the Woods, The Likeness, Faithful Place, Broken Harbor, The Secret Place, The Trespasser and The Witch Elm. Her books have won awards including the Edgar, Anthony, Macavity, and Barry awards, the Los Angeles Times Award for Best Mystery/Thriller, and the Irish Book…
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