Tana French: In the Woods

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.

Val McDermid: A Place of Execution

I have finally gotten around to reading my first novel by Val McDermid, A Place of Execution, and it lived up to all the praise I've read concerning her work. Well-written, great characterisation, captivating plot, excellent balance of foreshadowing/seeding of pointers to the final revelation - everything done just right. I started reading it last night, and I could not put it down, but rather read all night and finished around dawn.

It is one of those books where for one reason or another, an old crime is revisited with unexpected results. The first (and longest) part of the novel is set in 1963, in the isolated village of Scardale, England - barely twelve homes plus the manor where the local landowner lives - where a young girl, Alison Carter, the thirteen-year-old stepdaughter of the new incumbent of the manor, Phillip Hawkin, is missing. For recently promoted DI George Bennett, this is his first big case - and he's determined to solve it. The narrative follows the case through all the dead ends and new developments of investigation, through to an arrest, trial and conviction for rape and murder - even though the body of Alison Carter is never found.

Thirty-five years later, journalist Catherine Heathcote, who grew up near Scardale and remembers Alison Carter, meets press liaison officer Paul Bennett - George's son - in Brussels, and learns that his girlfriend's sister, Janis Wainwright, now lives in the old manor house in Scardale. The co-incidental meeting leads to a decision to interview George Bennett and write a book about the case - but what she and Bennett discover changes everything they thought they knew about the disappearance of Alison Carter.

Kathy Reichs: Speaking in Bones

Speaking in Bones by Kathy Reichs, the most recent chapter in her Temperance Brennan series, delivered exactly what I expect and look for in Reichs' novels - a fast but engaging read with lots of forensic clues and some unusual information tossed in.

The main elements of the plot this time involved some unidentified partial remains, a glimpse into the culture of the "websleuthing community" and extreme religious fundamentalism. Well put together, and this time out, I was as surprised as Tempe was when the penny dropped.

Naturally, Tempe blithely put herself in mortal danger again, which is one of the things that annoys me greatly about Reichs' books, but on the plus side, things are looking good for Tempe and Detective Ryan.