In the Woods

Tana French's In the Woods will appeal to readers who crave well-written, suspenseful, character driven police procedurals. It should also appeal to those people (like my colleague who recommended) who claim to not like police procedurals but love movies like Gone Baby Gone. It has two big mysteries, plenty of chilling imagery and balances pacing and plot well. And despite it being a debut novel, French is comfortable enough to put aside some of the genre rules.

The book is both helped and hurt by French's flouting of genre conventions. While the book is constructed in the classic buddy pair style, the relationship develops in an unexpected way and the effects of the changes directly play into the plot, which is nice.

On the downside, French invests quite a bit into an element of the story which she ultimately drops, in a way I thought perfunctory. She may be taking a page from Peter Robinson ( a writer from whom other writers ought to take pages) and be setting up a plot for a future book, but it didn't feel that way. Instead it felt like it could not be properly resolved into the structure of the book.

The book is set in modern Dublin and describes some of the cultural conflicts arising in this newly wealthy city. I suspect the future books will delve deeper into this city. There is nothing better than crime novels to get a feel for the socioeconomic map of a city. Or at least an author's perceptions of said map.