Originally published in Medium.com, Nov 23, 2024
Book review
Tana French in her mid 30’s wrote In the Wood. It was her first novel and the premier novel in what came to be known as the Dublin Murder Squad series. The novel succeeded probably more than anyone expected, not just because the who-done-it plot was engaging, but likely more so because of how she portrayed the two protagonist detectives assigned to the case.
One of the two, a young 30’s male, tall and aspiring, was himself involved in the disappearance of his two best friends twenty years earlier, in what remained an unsolved cold case. His involvement in that case as a surviving, but memory lost victim, gave him a certain personal interest and leverage in the present case, that being the murder of a twelve year old young ballet prodigy.
The other detective was a young woman about the same age, as experienced as her male partner, but with a contrasting personality and life style, ones that presented opportunities to French for plotting scenes of conflict and accord as the two engaged in the investigation.
I’m not a huge fan of murder mysteries, but in this case it was the interactions of the detectives both within and outside the confines of the investigation, that made the read not just Murder, She Wrote interesting, but Sense and Sensibility compelling. Both detectives, as experienced as they were coming into their partnership, outgrew some of their preconceptions and complacency about their respective skill sets and developed a more adult understandings of their own strengths and failings through their collaboration.
The book was headlined as part psychological thriller, and it was so, but in ways that involved the psychologies of the detectives as much as the psychology of the murderer.
The novel makes it clear that both detectives gained and lost in conducting the investigation, but it’s conjectural on my part how those gains and losses manifested in their subsequent work. Those developments lay outside the main story line toward the end of the novel, where you’re left wondering if she’d develop them in a sequel. In fact, in her follow-on novel, The Likeness, one half of the team becomes her main protagonist.
The putting together of this book, which was critically well received and became a multiple prize winner, was masterful. The charm and accuracy of her mesh of language and metaphor was spot on in describing and distinguishing the personalities of each character, especially nailing the portraits of the two protagonists. Neither came across as stamped by central casting, not at the beginning when they were filled with raw excitement about the work or at the ending when they were chastened by the realities of rough work accomplished. The progression was entirely believable as she developed her characters from acquaintances to friends and from individual investigators to partners. It was in itself a kind of ballet that the murder victim would have understood and appreciated.
In the Woods by Tana French: 9780143113492 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books, The bestselling debut, with over a million copies sold, that launched Tana French, author of the forthcoming novel www.penguinrandomhouse.com.
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