Tana French: In the Woods

[bibliogramma]

Tana French's first novel, In the Woods, is a thing of beauty. More than just another crime thriller, it's a sensitive and moving portrait of the often wounded people who seek the truth about the darkest impulses in the human psyche.

Adam Robert Ryan is the sole survivor of an unsolved mystery that left him, blood-soaked and traumatised, alone in the woods while two of his friends went missing. Now an adult, he is a detective with the Dublin Garda, working the murder squad. His partner, Cassie Maddox, is the only woman in the squad; her friendly manner hides wounds that not even Ryan knows about. Not just partners with a great working relationship, they are friends as well.

Then they catch a murder case in Knocknaree, the town where Ryan lived when he was young, the town he hasn't been back to since his parents took him away from the woods where his friends vanished. The victim is a young girl, left in the middle of an archeological dig just outside of Knocknaree, head smashed, body violated with an unknown object.

The investigation takes many turns, as the detectives find links to a political battle over a roadway soon to be built over the ancient ruins where the body was found, to connections to the twenty-year-old disappearances of Ryan's friends. And by the end of it, both Cassie and Rysn's lives are changed forever.

I can hardly wait to read more from French.