Customer Reviews

In the Woods

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If you like good writing and enjoy psychologically complex mysteries, In the Woods will probably be one of your favorite new books this year. The best mysteries help us enter into the world of the detective, as well as into the world of the criminal and victim. Ms. French accomplishes this balancing act with aplomb while sharing many wonderful metaphors in lines of sparkling prose.

"What I warn you to remember is that I am a detective. Our relationship with truth is fundamental, but cracked, refracting confusingly . . . ."

In the Woods is the story of two crimes which occur in the same Irish location twenty years apart. The crimes are linked by the narrator, Rob Ryan, who survived the first crime with a case of amnesia. In 1984, three friends aged 12 headed into the woods, and only one was found . . . in near-catatonic condition with blood-filled shoes, scraped knees, slashes across the back of his shirt, and clutching a tree's trunk with bloodied fingernails. The survivor was called Adam Ryan, and his family soon moved away . . . and sent him off to boarding school in England. While there, he learned to speak with an upper-class English accent and started to call himself Rob. His passion? To become a Murder detective.

The new case becomes his assignment because Ryan and his partner, Cassie Maddox, happened to be playing Worms when the body of a 12-year-old girl, Katharine Devlin, was found on a pagan altar stone at an archeological site in Knocknaree where a motorway is about to be built. Ryan decides not to tell his supervisor that he had been a victim at the same age. Later, when potential connections between the cases appear, Ryan and Maddox agree to keep Ryan's secret.

The investigation soon bogs down into endless checking through standard procedures, but no motives or clues surface to point out the guilty party. The investigation does, however, turn up many other secrets. The stress of the case take a large toll on the partners and Ryan finds himself irresistibly attracted to the gap in his past. Can he regain his memory? Will that solve the current case?

The red herrings in this story are unusually well done. I suspect most readers will find the book's resolutions to be surprising and thought-provoking. Even if you don't, the stylish prose should keep you more than entertained. Much like in reading P. G. Wodehouse, I found myself stopping again and again to reread sentences that sparkled with precise and novel images.

This has to be one of the best written mysteries I've ever read. French's writing is so fluid and lyrical I often re-read lines so I could grasp their beauty.

Prose aside, it's a fantastic plot with a good deal of psychological angst and insight, and once you're involved you'll not want to put it down. Plus, you'll be kept guessing which is rare indeed.

The story is woven with great intricacy and skill and if you're like me, you'll just love Cassie with her edgy, Irish humor. I can't say enough about this book - it's a must read, folks!

Though well-written and thought provoking in spots, the author has a tendency to go off on tangental flights of fancy as though she's writing in the midst of delerium. Whenever the story stays on track, it is interesting and there is a heightening sense of expectation for the "who done it" moment. However, only one of the mysteries is solved and the reader is left hanging as to the result of the other. I thought as I proceeded through the last few pages that at last I was going to get my answer. So, imagine my surprise when I didn't get it! Hugely let down, I felt like tossing the book away--something I almost never do. I looked at the synopsis of her next two books, hoping to discover that this mystery was being carried forward. Apparently, not. Perhaps she'll circle back to it in her fourth, or fifth book, but I'm not certain I will stick around and see.

The story is narrated in the first person by Adam"Rob" alternates back and forth in time between 1984 and the present day.

One day in Knocknaree (near Dublin), twelve year old Adam Ryan and his close friends Peter and Jamie were playing in the woods when an unexplained event happened, his friends disappeared without a trace to never be found. Adam was discovered pressed against a tree, his shoes filled with blood and no recollection of what had transpired.

Twenty years later, Adam now "Rob" a detective in the Dublin police force is drawn back into the mystery when the body of a little girl is found at the site of the old tragedy. With the help of his partner "Cassie", Rob hopes not only to solve the present case but also the twenty year old mystery of the woods.

I enjoyed this novel even with all its predictability, redundancy and its slow moving plot. It is a long book; the author had a tendency to be a little long-winded. A lot of time was spent identifying the relationship between Cassie and Rob and left us with the old cliché of male/female partnership. The characters are multi-dimensional and dynamic some may love Rob and some may not, Cassie on the other hand is a spunky, smart, witty and likable character. The character driven plot wavers between domestic issues and political issues; it never really finds its footing and ends on a very disappointing note. Nevertheless I found the book to be a page turner and I am looking forward to reading French's next novel.

SOME SPOLIERS: I finished "In the Woods" in the wee small hours of this morning - couldn't put it down. I'm putting Tana French as one of my very favourite contemporary authors. She brings her characters vividly alive - multi dimensional, the dialogue so believable that I could almost hear their voices. While I was away from my reading, I thought about them, their lives, their predicaments, and the woods, as if they and it really existed. Now, I have read the reviews at Amazon.co.uk and many of them talk of a very unsatisfying ending. I, as well, had hoped for an explanation as to the fate of the 2 childhood friends of Adam, but I did feel the 'supernatural' clues along the way were there to suggest a possibility that 'something' (the pooka?) rather than 'someone' was to blame. In all the 67 reviews on the uk site, no-one mentioned what was found in the dig (on the last pages) - a small stone relic which depicted a man with stag antlers. When I read that, it seemed to me that it was meant to suggest paganism - which had already been mentioned - but now it seemed to me to be a final clue as to an 'otherworldly' presence being responsible for the deaths of the children. Thrilling! Engrossing! Highly recommended!!!

For a first novel this is a excellent read!! You can't help but get wrapped up in the two main characters as they investigate a very difficult crime. French does a great job getting you to feel their frustration and pain. The pages fly by and the villan seems to drop out of the blue! A page burner right to the last! In my books this is right up there with Stephen Booth and Ian Rankin! Well done Tana!!!

I read this book some months ago and loved it. Could not put it down.
I loved it so much I sent an email to the author and she responded!

She said she was following up with a book called the Likeness, and I just looked now and it is in the stores. The first thing I will do today is go to purchase it....Cant wait..

Fran

For a first time author, Tana French is a wonderful writer. She weaves two intriguing murder mysteries together and has the reader looking forward to solving both of them. While I do applaud her for originality (I was not completely surprised by the identity of the murderer but instead the author's take on the character) and for her deep character development,French makes a grave mistake in not solving one of the story's main mysteries. Anyone can create a locked room mystery- it's finding out the who, the why and the how that makes it delicious. French's novel, however, was completely unsatisfying. At nearly 600 pages, the novel tends to drag on and leaves the readers with no gratification. The only thing this book left me thinking was how dissapointed I was in its ending and how I felt much like Adam Ryan in the novel- left in middle of the woods with no idea what just happened.

I read this book because of all the rave reviews posted here. Overall, the book was disappointing. It is somewhat long-winded, yet this is forgivable, considering that the author has spent a lot of time developing and defining the personalities of all the characters in the story. The plot is good and original (at least to my perception). However, the book's greatest flaw is that it became transparently obvious who the killer was as soon as that person was introduced in the course of the story. Every time the murderer appeared in the story, I became more and more convinced in my deduction. I read till the end of the book to confirm if I was right (which I was - no surprises there), but mainly to find out about the fate of Adam's childhood friends. To me, this was the more intriguing of the two mysteries. I just couldn't believe it when the author simply finished the book with no mention of the explanation I was eager for. I felt cheated. I feel the author was not right to engross the readers in the mystery of the two kids' disappearance and lure them along till the very last page of the book and then simply dump them. Also, characters like Adam Ryan and Sam O'Neill appear too naive to be believeable. How many full-grown, working, urban adults do you know who are sill naive enough to believe in the purity of politicians and professions of love from a vain & flirtatious girl?
All being said, I enjoyed the writing style and the sensitive descriptions of emotions, feelings and relationships. My advice to the author would be to switch genres and start writing romances. That would suit her writing better.

Three children like to play in the woods. One is threatened with boarding school. They all decide to run away. There is a murder. One is left. Twenty years later, that one is now a homicide detective. There's another murder in the woods. You'd think they would be connected because, if they're not, what's the point of the first story. The homicide detective has a female partner. The predictable happens and then the unpredictable results. The man reacts to the intimacy like a woman perhaps, because the writer is a woman whose first person narrator is a man. And then, there's the longest denouement I've read in years. This may be a good book to pass the time but I would rate it far from a fulfilling read.