Slow Burn Of Mounting Tension....
Atmospheric mystery, character driven and engaging with a haunting setting. A slow burn of mounting tension, well written and often emotional with multi faceted, and always credible, characters. An interesting standalone.

Cal Hooper decides to move to a small town in Ardnakelty, Ireland, following how retirement from the Chicago police force and a stressful divorce. He’s seeking a quiet, stress free retirement, fixing up his new property and enjoying the countryside. However, almost against his will, he is drawn into investigating the disappearance of a local boy, relying on his well-honed detection skills. But will his skills serve him well, in small-town Ireland? In a town where everyone knows everyone else’s business, and nothing gets past the gossipy tongue of the local shopkeeper or the barflies in the local pub, are there ever any real secrets, and is everyone what they seem to be?

I am a huge fan of Tana French, and think she is an accomplished mystery author. I felt that this was a bit of a departure from her Dublin Murder Squad books, and on reflection, that was probably a deliberate choice by her. It’s not quite as twisty-turny as her previous books, leaning more on character development, which I greatly enjoyed. The mystery had a good solution, and I didn’t think it was particularly obvious. A good read, and definitely would recommend this!


I received this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Another thrilling novel from Tana French. A slow burner, with a dark undertone. The ending feels slightly rushed, and personally I would have liked it wrap up in a slightly clearer way. But a great read for long, dark winter nights.

I loved everything about this book. I loved the characters and the setting. The descriptions and the pace of the story made me feel as if I was there. I could imagine the characters and the scenery. The storyline was well thought out. I just wanted to keep reading.

Thank you to Netgalley for my copy.

Definitely a slow-burn that didn't develop in the ways I thought it might. Very descriptive of the Irish landscape and authentic patterns of speech. I found the protagonist a bit hard to connect with as he's not an emotional character and the twist with Trey was surprising but didn't particularly add anything to the story for me.

My thanks to NetGalley and publisher Penguin General-UK for the ARC.
What a fabulous story. Some may well describe this as slow for a murder/mystery or indeed a psychological thriller, but I found it thoroughly engrossing - I was seeing this as a film - the gentle unfolding of the relationship between a thirteen year-old lad and a retired Chicago cop in Ireland. The author creates the depth of atmosphere which draws you in - so absorbing - even the constant rain, the colours of the fields and mountains, put the reader firmly within the story..

Cal Hooper, newly retired from Chicago PD and newly divorced, has moved to Ireland and bought a run-down cottage with some land. He's making some friends, especially with Mart, a near-neighbour, bachelor farmer, he joins the locals in the pub and makes headway doing up the cottage. He begins to feel watched and engineers a situation to bring the culprit Trey, into conversation. As the relationship develops Trey asks Cal to find his brother, nineteen year-old Brendan; he left home one day 6 months previously and disappeared.

Sounds too simple? Oh No! As Cal begins to ask questions, where previously his good-natured banter with the locals was enjoyable, Cal begins to feel he's being given veiled warnings, but he won't let Trey down. The reader is drawn into a layered plot with twists and turns and certainly some surprises. Excellent writing and dialogue with interesting characters.
Loved it! Enjoy!

Retired detective Cal Hooper lives his dream of moving to a remote village in rural Ireland, named Ardnakelty, believing it to be the perfect escape. Having purchased a dilapidated cottage he plans to fix-up, he looks forward to passing the time with a mixture of DIY and walks in the scenic mountains surrounding the small community but above all else, he's hoping to put his old police instincts to bed forever. After twenty-five years in the Chicago police force and a bruising divorce, he just wants to build a new life in a pretty spot with a good pub where nothing much happens. But when a local kid whose brother has gone missing arm-twists him into investigating, and no-one in the village, least of all the police, seems to care, Cal, once again feels that restless itch. No-one is more shocked than Cal himself when he uncovers layers of darkness beneath his picturesque retreat, and starts to realise that even small towns shelter dangerous secrets. The gut instinct he's relied on for his entire career is telling him something is wrong in this community, and he must find out what, even if it brings trouble to his door.

This is a riveting, compelling and exciting standalone crime novel from one of the greatest writers in the genre today. It is an intelligent, multilayered mystery that is gripping and held my interest from first page to last. As always, the writing is superb and draws you in from the outset, the characters believable and real, and the plot action-packed whilst packing an emotional punch. French pays attention to subtle details that many authors would neglect and the stunning, atmospheric location, a character in itself, is portrayed magnificently adding to the sinister foreboding that hangs over the village like a dark cloud. It's a slow burner and written in French's flowing prose which makes it such an easy book to read and lose yourself in. This is a crime writer who knows exactly how to pull the wool over readers' eyes time and time again and who can be trusted to have you on the edge of your seat, making guesses at those behind the crimes but each time she somehow manages to fool you. It's a highly entertaining, masterful and utterly engrossing read.

All in all, this is an intense, disquieting and superbly woven tale of suspense, asking what we sacrifice in our search for truth and justice, and what we risk if we don't. Many thanks to Viking for an ARC.

The Searcher is a murder mystery with a difference. Very slow-paced and descriptive, the story is almost more about the characters than the mystery. Cal is an ex-detective who moved from Chicago to rural Ireland to live a slower and more peaceful life. But when a teenager, Trey, starts visiting him, he finds himself involved in a missing persons case that will consume him. Trey's older brother Brendan disappears without trace, and Trey cannot rest until she knows where he is. As Cal digs deeper, he discovers that the sleepy village he now calls home, hides a dark secret.

For me, the best part about this book was the relationship that developed between Cal and Trey, a young girl who has never had a role model, and who finds in Cal, a father figure who takes the time to build her trust, and who protects her from harm. Cal does solve the mystery and whilst it is not the result Trey was hoping for, there is nevertheless a hopeful conclusion to this well-written plot.

A very slow-paced novel that is more character driven than crime thriller. If you’re looking for a typical murder / mystery investigation, you’re not going to get it here. This is a slow-moving story about the place and the people more than the action.

The descriptions of the countryside are so engaging and easy flowing, they were almost poetic. It is so easy to conjure up images of Ireland through her descriptions.

The characterization of the people in the story is just wonderful. While you learn almost nothing substantial about most of the characters, by the end of the novel you feel as if you know them all intimately.

Initially, I was disappointed because I was looking for a novel more akin to Ms. French’s previous writings. But the further into the story I was drawn, the more I fell in love with it.

#netgalley #tanafrench #thesearcher #penguin

Tana French writes so well about the Irish landscape and people. Though this is a crime book it's really so much more. The story is slow but the words, descriptions and characters are well drawn. If you want a thriller I'd give this a pass but if you love a good Irish story in the form of a slow burn you may love this.

Cal is an ex cop from Chicago who finds himself in rural Ireland trying to piece together a local mystery. This book is very well written, Tana French has a way with words and the rugged hills of Ireland came alive as I was reading. There were at times too many pages devoted to describing surroundings however and not enough action. This is a slowly paced novel, with threads of a mystery slowly being unpicked and coming into place, a very good read for fans of atmospheric slow burners. 4 stars

Cal is a retired Chicago detective who, looking for some peace and quiet, has moved into a fixer upper in a sleepy Irish village. Welcomed by all, he starts to settle into his new lifestyle...... that is until a local kid starts coming around and bugging Call about finding his brother who has gone missing. Cal is reluctant to get involved in what appears to be a runaway teenager, but he just can't help himself and starts to poke around.

⭐4 - I liked this book, it's written so well, with a perfect insight into very rural Irish village life. I found myself slipping very easily into the story and although it's a slow burner, I was never bored. The characters felt real and loved the banter between Cal and his neighbour Mart! A solid standalone

Main character Cal, ex Chicago cop moved to rural Ireland to escape the rat race but somehow discovering people are people good and bad pretty much everywhere, I thought was a bit of a cliche. Her descriptive sense of rural life was beautifully crafted but there was too much of it. The Wych Elm, as an example, is a tome but I devoured every page, none of it was wasted time but with The Searcher I found myself skim reading great chunks just to get to an actual plot development.
That underlying sense of tension, that feeling you are heading towards something you cant escape, that is one of the biggest strengths of previous books, it is entirely missing here in my opinion. Sorry to say the resolution felt phoned in and overall I only really finished it out of loyalty to the author and in the hope of a kick ass finale that would make it all worthwhile.

I have read and loved all of Tana French's books, and this standalone is no exception.It’s a slow-paced narrative in the traditional Irish style, with brilliant character and dialogue.
The plot involves a newcomer to an area,an ex-cop from Chicago relocating to a remote Irish village to fish no less - who gets drawn in to a missing persons case, whilst having to adapt to a different way of life and social rules.
I highly recommend it to all of Tana French's fans and to those who want to read an amazing novel.

Rural Ireland is the setting for this novel. A retired American cop has moved in to a remote house on the outskirts of a village and becomes embroiled in a mystery surrounding a missing person. I enjoyed the book, although personally I prefer a slightly faster pasted plot.

This was a really interesting book and holds the things i love so much in thrillers, most importantly, a delicious environment where i want to be! It makes me feel cuddled up whilst reading. The story had me gripped from the beginning with intrigue and mystery.

French’s Irish set Western : Shades of Eastwood, Ford

Forget everything you thought you thought you knew about French as a writer – except that she is a fine one. With this, and her previous book, The Wych Elm, French has moved away from her assigned genre, ‘literary crime fiction’ Literary certain remains, but she won’t be confined by genre. I know this has disappointed some readers who might like their artists to stay fixed. I think, in a different field, of the outrage felt by folk fans when Dylan went electric. Personally, if it is done well, (it is) kudos to the artist who follows where creativity leads, neither deliberately pushing into a different direction, just to be clever, nor playing safe because, well, it sells.

There certainly is crime her, but in some ways its solving, and the finding and understanding the motive of the ‘perp’ takes place in a wider context, a more mythic one, and far from the confines of ‘police procedural’ Mind you, even within her Dublin Murder Squad book, she has always been writing something with more of the feeling of some kind of ancient, repeating story of human tragedy, more akin to classical Greek drama, in many ways, than most crime fiction

French nods to the Western film genre in the title of this book, which sets up, particularly in the way she evokes landscape, tangles with John Ford’s The Searchers, with John Wayne

The Searcher is set in a kind of rural, one horse town in the west of Ireland. And the title fits, equally well, the two central characters, both different kinds of outsider. And they rather share the dual and sometimes conflicting role The Outsider has in Clint Eastwood’s Westerns- a somewhat catalysing figure, agent of redemption and justice, for good or ill.

Cal Hooper, introduced first is a middle aged man, 25 years a Chicago cop, before some kind of disillusion, both personal and professional, following divorce, brings him to seek a quiet, time stood still existence on the other side of the world, where he plans to be a quiet homesteader, in a reflective, slow, self sufficient way, doing up the rather ramshackle house he has bought, catching fish and game, settling into his new community with its different rhythms, ethics and culture. Cal gets drawn into a different journey, discovering rural backwaters have their own share of unfathomable darkness, when he crosses the path of a troubled, troubling adolescent. Trey comes from a family regarded as something close to worthless, and had a father who failed to provide parenting. Cal has his own sense of somehow having failed here, and a regretted, somewhat estranged relationship with his now adult child.

French, as ever writes most beautifully, particularly evoking a sense of place and relationship with the natural world, which is described most evocatively, and often seems to reflect or stand for something symbolic in her books, something imbued with meaning :

This is a slow moving book, which builds unease at times imperceptibly, and the awareness of this, for the reader, is Cal’s. There are for sure shocking revelations and twists, and when they come, they don’t feel as if the author was engaged in manipulating the reader, rather, the shocks are for Cal to discover – we only know what he can know.

Now, as ever, I await French’s next book eagerly and impatiently, wherever her next journey leads.

However – note to the publisher – I don’t think that continuing to make the comparisons to Donna Tartt helps French, as it raises wrong expectations of her present writing. Inevitably Donna Tartt territory – even for Tartt herself – leads readers to thikg ‘The Secret History’ Certainly, French wrote a couple of books, set around elite academia and a superior clique of students, where the parallels were clear. But French, like Tartt, is not a writer who wades through the same river again and again

Thanks to NetGalley, Penguin General UK - Fig Tree, Hamish Hamilton, Viking, Penguin Life, Penguin Business, Viking and Tana French for this advanced reader's copy of The Searcher.

What can I say that hasn't been said about Tana French before? She's a master at weaving tales that captivate the reader's imagination, injecting just enough mystery and intrigue to keep you guessing. French's books take place in her native Ireland, with an Irish cast of characters so detailed and rich that as you read the book it plays like a movie in your mind. The Searcher is no exception. The biggest difference is the main character, Cal, an expat from America, looking for peace and quiet in the hills of Ireland. If you think he found it then you've never read a Tana French book before.

For fans of Tana French, this is a perfect addition to the French bibliography. For anyone looking for a gorgeously written mystery, this if for you.

I am afraid that this book was a very slow burn and it took a long time before anything happened. I struggled on and sadly gave up half way through as I have better things to spend my time on.
Sorry and at least I tried what is a great author.

There's an old saying, 'If you want to see a fool in the countryside, you'll have to take him with you'. So it was with ex-Chicago cop Cal Hooper, who took himself off to the West of Ireland, ostensibly to find a quieter and more contemplative life. It's amazing how different things look with emerald tinted spectacles until he starts to suspect he's being taken for a fool in his hunt for Trey's brother Brendan. It isn't long before he realises that all the types he came across in his 25 years as one of Chicago's finest are present in the green pastures and mountains of Ireland. Naivety lifted, he discovers a community where there's a natural order to things, one where the law is in folk's own perception of right and wrong. This reminded me strongly of some of Laurie Lee's descriptions of country life when he was a lad and youg man. It would appear things haven't changed that much.
The Searcher is beautifully written and sucks you in like a wrongly placed foot in a peat bog.