In the Woods (Dublin Murder Squad, #1) by Tana French

“They are running into legend, into sleepover stories and nightmares parents never hear. Down the faint lost paths you would never find alone, skidding round the tumbled stone walls, they stream calls and shoelaces behind them like comet-trails.” pg 14, ebook.

Rob Ryan is a detective in the Dublin Murder Squad. He has a curious past, being the only survivor of a strange afternoon in the woods. Rob and two of his friends went into the woods, but only he emerged. His memories of that time are a blank. It may be that his subconscious prefers it that way.

“Obviously, I have always wished I could remember what happened in that wood. The very few people who know about the whole Knocknaree thing invariably suggest, sooner or later, that I should try hypnotic regression… I worry that I might come out of hypnosis with that sugar-high glaze of self-satisfied enlightenment, like a seventeen-year-old who’s just discovered Kerouac, and start proselytizing strangers in pubs.” pg 35, ebook

Fast forward twenty years, a child’s body is found in the same town, Knocknaree, where Rob lived when he was a child. Could the two cases be related?

“This is what I read in the file, the day after I made detective. I will come back to this story again and again, in any number of different ways. A poor thing, possibly, but mine own: this is the only story in the world that nobody but me will ever be able to tell.” pg 15, ebook

I loved the unfolding of both of these stories. Tana French was able to build tension through the slow reveal and she kept me guessing. Rob was the quintessential unreliable narrator and likable (for the most part). He made some bone-headed decisions that I didn’t agree with, but the reader always knew why he was making them.

Rob’s partner, Cassie, was my favorite character in the story. She’s the only woman on the Dublin Murder Squad and loyal to a fault. Cassie also has some dark secrets in her past. She and Rob complement each other perfectly.

“When we went into work the next morning we were friends. It really as simple as that: we planted seeds without thinking, and woke up to our own private beanstalk.” pg 30, ebook

I also loved the layers of this story. There’s the relationship between Cassie and Rob, their relationship to the rest of the squad, Rob’s memories, Cassie’s backstory, the two cases, and the reactions of everyone around them.

“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.” pg 57, ebook

Recommended for readers who enjoy mysteries and not-so-scary thrillers. I’m definitely picking up the next book in this series.

For any readers who enjoy page to screen viewing, the show adaptation of this book and its sequel called “Dublin Murders” was pretty well done.

Thanks for reading!

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