In the Woods - Tana French

**warning: this may contain spoilers for you; proceed with caution if you still intend to read the book...




In the Woods is the first person narrative of Adam "Rob" Ryan. In 1984 when Rob was a twelve-year-old boy in Knocknaree (near Dublin) he and his friends, Peter and Jamie, went off to play in the woods, like they often did. However, Peter and Jamie never came back. Adam was found clinging desperately to a tree in the woods and not remembering anything.

Twenty years later, Adam is now "Rob" and he's a police detective. As fate would have it, the case involving the death of Katy Devlin falls into his and his partner Cassie's lap. This case has similarities to Rob's own case from 20 years ago. Katy's twelve and her dead body was found at an archaeological site in the woods where Rob's friends disappeared. Rob and Cassie have to investigate Katy's family and the people surrounding them to figure out who killed her and if it had any connection to the case from 20 years ago.

There has been quite a bit of hype surrounding this book, and it won the 2007 Edgar Award for best first novel. So, there are folks out there who think this book is outstanding. I wouldn't put it in that category, but I did like it and think it was good.

My criticisms of the book? For me it was predictable. At one point Rob, who narrates the story, says something about not judging him too harshly because "you fell for it, too." I thought, "no, I really didn't."

I had high hopes that French was going to go against a male/female cliche. So often a male/female partnership ends up with the two people sleeping together. In this book, Cassie and Rob start off as "just friends" and have been several years. And their relationship is such a close and special one. The vast majority of the book they remain that way, and I kept waiting for them to sleep together because that's predictable, but at the same time I was hoping that by the end of the book they would still be "just friends" because quite frankly, that's such a rare thing in novels like this. I wanted French to "go against the grain" instead of being cliche. And I do believe that it definitely could have worked. She didn't, though.


And finally, the book was LONG, too LONG. If a book is moving and the plot is tight, I have no problems with long. I'll read a thousand pages under those circumstances. But French had a tendency to be verbose. She often said more than she needed to, and there was a significant amount of redundancy.

Positives? Characterization, definitely! All the characters were multi-dimensional, very dynamic. It's my hope that French's intention was for the reader to dislike Rob by the end of the book. I definitely did. Cassie was my favorite character. She was a young female in a male-dominated police department. She was criticized because of how she was assigned to the department, but she did earn her keep. She was spunky and smart and witty. Definitely a likable character.

I listened to this book on audio. The reader was very good, but again, it was long - 18 sound discs. I am glad I listened, and I will pursue other books by French in the future. It is my understanding that her next book is written from the perspective of Cassie, so that definitely interests me. Maybe she'll pull the writing a little tighter on this go round...