This is the first Tana French novel I have read and I really enjoyed it. It is the story of Cal, a retired cop who has moved to a small Irish town. As he is doing up his farm house he is approached by Trey about a missing brother.
I found the story quite a slow burner but I really enjoyed the development of relationships in the story and the description of the places and people.
I will definitely pick up more books by Tana.

The Searcher
Author: Tana French
Publisher : Penguin
Publication Date: 5/11/20

*No Spoilers

I expected a gritty murder mystery, what I got was so much more. An engrossing and moving story about a retired US cop living in rural Ireland. He becomes drawn in to a case of a missing local man (unwillingly at first) and what develops is a mystery with plenty of shock twists, which slowly developed to a cracking ending.
The characterisation and detail was so finely drawn I kept forgetting about the main plot. I could make no guess at what had actually happened, so when it was eventually unravelled it was a real lightbulb moment. It suddenly all made perfect sense.

I loved it. Highly recommended.

I’d like to thank the author, publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this advance digital copy in exchange for my honest and unbiased opinion.

This a book that I was very much looking forward to reading, having read a couple of the Dublin Murder Squad books and The Wych Elm, I had a fairly decent idea of where this book was coming from, and I think I was both right and wrong.

This is a story of a former policeman - Cal - moving from America to rural Ireland for a quiet life away from a broken marriage and a job he know longer wants to do. It' shares some of the DNA of her former books, it has the same ear for dialogue (and lovely Irish dialect words - Banjax, gurrier - that anyone growing up around the Irish, as I did, will have heard before) and shares a quieter feel with The Wych Elm. But it's also not like those books a all, it's much more akin to a Western - lone protagonist helps youngster - than a proper crime novel, and it's sparser and slower too.

There's some really good stuff here - the descriptions of the rural are lovely, and the townland is drawn really well, you get a sense for how these people live - small, insular, everyone knows everyone, and that helps build some tension as the story goes on. But it's slow and the action, such as there is, really only occurs in the latter half of the book, and due to this seems a little rushed.

The characters as mentioned are well drawn for the most part, but I didn't really like the main character, his constant use of 'mama' for mum really annoyed me for some reason, and his referring to people as miss, such as miss :Lena, rather than Lena, didn't do it for me either. An example of that supposedly polite American way of talking that makes Ma'am sound quite offensive.

Not liking the main character was always going to be a drawback, and the slowness of the story doesn't do it any favours, but the descriptions of the countryside are lovely, and there's enough characterisation to keep the readers attention to the end of the book.

Book Review: The Searcher by Tana French

Genre: Crime Fiction
Rating: 4.5 stars (4.5/5)
Source: Received from Publisher
Publication Date: 5 Nov 2020

📚My thoughts📚

Cal has retired early from the Chicago police force, and is living a quiet life restoring a cottage in the West of Ireland. He wasn't long finding trouble though, or rather trouble searched him out and made him seek answers.

Well this book has reminded me of all the things I love about Tana French

- Her characters sparkle with life. We get so many subtle clues about what makes them tick and it just makes me feel like I know them intimately.

- The plot is buried deep within the pages. So deep that sometimes you forget it's brewing away nicely in the background while you are just caught up in the characters and the lush writing.

- You need to read between the lines. Tana French will never spell everything out for you, and you have to form your own opinions of why things happened and what really motivated certain people to act certain ways.

- Initially the ending disappointed me. But when I reflected it felt perfect as it was a full circle right back to where we started.

- The theme is heavy, red raw and left me feeling very unsettled. Because I pictured everything vividly in my head while I read. Balanced to perfection with colourful banter between Cal and the locals.

Complex, full of mockery and life in all shades; I just loved it

Thanks to Penguin Books and NetGalleyfor giving me for giving me a copy of this book for review consideration. As always, no matter what the source of the book, you get my honest, unbiased opinion.

📚Book Blurb📚

Cal Hooper thought a fixer-upper in a remote Irish village would be the perfect escape. 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 then a local kid comes looking for his help. His brother has gone missing, and no one, least of all the police, seems to care. Cal wants nothing to do with any kind of investigation, but somehow he can't make himself walk away.

Soon Cal will discover that even in the most idyllic small town, secrets lie hidden, people aren't always what they seem, and trouble can come calling at his door.

Our greatest living mystery writer weaves a masterful tale of breath-taking beauty and suspense, asking what we sacrifice in our search for truth and justice, and the dangers of finding what we seek.

The Searcher by Tana French is not your average mystery thriller – it is a slow-paced and character-focused adult fiction in which mystery is a part of the plot, but not the entire plot. If you are a fan of Irish landscapes, small and close-knit societies and slow-burn mysteries, you will love The Searcher.

When Cal Hooper moved to a quaint little Irish village in the middle of nowhere, his only objective was to get away from the bone-deep weariness of having worked as a detective in Chicago. What he did not expect was to help a 12 year old kid find his missing brother, or to get entangled in the dangerous and hidden politics of the close-knit community.

While the mystery of Trey’s missing brother is integral to the plot, the majority of plot revolves around the unlikely friendship between Cal and Trey. It is beautiful and heart-wrenching to see a child forsaken by the society gradually opening up to someone. I wanted to protect Trey with all my heart and was terrified that something bad is going to happen to him. A lot of the plot also focusses on other characters of the village and the complex web of friendships and secrets they live in.

The entire book is extremely atmospheric and transports you to the quiet and solitude of the Irish countryside. French brings the gorgeous scenery alive with beautiful prose. It is equally fascinating to see Cal interact and come to terms with his new surroundings, all the while trying to understand the underlying workings of this society. We often see him ruminating about his days with the Chicago PD or about his wife and daughter, and in those moments we get to know a lot more about his complicated personality.

Overall, The Searcher is a thought-provoking and intricately detailed tale of complex societal mechanisms, friendships and secrets with a riveting mystery.

Couldn’t wait to read this and am so glad I did , the storyline and characters were really interesting and relationships between them were really well written . What disappointed me was how slow the storyline was and I felt it was rather predictable but still an enjoyable read .

This was one of my most anticipated reads of 2020 after all the hype, but this one just didn’t do it for me. It is really sad i have to give this one 3 stars.

I just found it a very slow book and didn't know where she was going with the storyline really.

Not much happened in this book until about the 60% read on my Kindle, it seemed a long wait and I grew tired at this point .

I was really hoping for a wow ending that would make me change my mind it gives me no joy to say that this Tana French novel left me very disappointed but i am glad i stuck it out till the end,

Thanks for the read but not as good as i anticipated.

I adore Tana French's writing and this book does not disappoint. I've heard a lot of criticism about lack of plot, but, whilst it's far from fast-paced, I did not find this a problem because I was so immersed in Cal's new life in Ireland and his relationship with Trey. But I don't think it should be categorised as a crime novel. It's literary fiction.

A wonderful book. I loved it, it had a great deal of diffferent elements, the social differences and locations. The act of befriending a local kid and the ongoing repurcussions were very interesting. It had a very slow burn, but held my attention all the way. I loved the characters and the Irish dialect and philisophy. Not to mention the breakfasts.
Brilliant book in every way. I loved it.

Honestly, I wasn't looking forward to reading this. My experiences of reading Tana French's work have varied from the very, very good (Broken Harbour, The Secret Place) to the underwhelming (The Witch Elm) to the inexplicably overrated (The Likeness). Having had mixed feelings about The Witch Elm, which like this book is a standalone, I wasn't necessarily expecting great things from The Searcher. On top of which, it just sounds really boring. Retired Chicago cop helping some kid find their missing brother in a small Irish village? Meh.

So I was as surprised as anyone when I was quickly gripped by it. It's not the plot, not exactly: it really is just about a retired Chicago cop helping some kid find their missing brother in a small Irish village. (In someone else's hands it might be the perfect setup for a cosy crime series.) It's not the characters, either, as I never fully warmed to any of them. It's French's handling of the characters – and their surroundings – that brings magic to it. The tension simmering so soft and low you don't even notice it for a while; the exceptionally well developed bond between Cal and Trey; the beautiful menace of the wild countryside.

It's not flashy, it's not twisty, and Cal is less memorable than many of French's protagonists. Yet I found myself struggling to put it down, reading hundreds of pages at a stretch. Rarely is a novel so quiet yet so compelling.

Cal has retired from the Chicago police force to a tiny town in rural Ireland, where he spends his time doing up an old farmhouse and enjoying long, casual chats with his neighbours. However, when a local teenager, Trey, whose older brother Brendan has recently gone missing, starts hanging around his property, Cal finds himself being pulled into this community far more deeply and dangerously than he intended. French is known for her brilliant Dublin Murder Squad novels, a series of police procedurals, and it seemed to me that, in The Searcher, she wanted to write about sombody conducting an investigation who can’t fall back on the apparatus of the state; no forensics, no technology, no mobile phone records. This allows French to showcase what she has always been best at – mapping out conversations between two people when one has something to hide and the other wants to find it out, which have before taken place in the interrogation room but are now set in bedrooms, shops and fields. However, thematically, Cal’s lack of formal ties also allows French to explore how this forces him to negotiate right and wrong outside the framework of the police force, and to ask questions about the role of the police themselves that are hugely relevant in the wake of the resurgent Black Lives Matter movement. The conversation that Cal and Trey have about the difference between ‘etiquette, manners and morals’ is absolutely crucial to French’s project, as is Cal tussling with the idea that he once had a personal ‘code’ which he has lost along the way.

However, although The Searcher is an intelligent and immersive novel, it fell a little short for me. Of all French’s protagonists, I felt Cal was the one who is least called upon to truly rethink what he believes. My concern is that somebody who has bought into ideas about the silliness of ‘woke’ millennials might think that they are being vindicated here – with Cal’s comments, for example, about how everyone today is too hung up on using the correct language rather than doing the right thing – and while I don’t think that’s what French is saying at all, I wanted her to back Cal into a tighter corner. Because the narrative ended up being too straightforward, this sits in the second tier of French novels for me, alongside The Witch Elm and my least favourite Dublin Murder Squad novel, Faithful Place. I still miss the supernatural spark that lights up all of French’s best books, and I don’t think her most recent stories have been as enthralling. Nevertheless, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: French cannot write a bad novel, and this is still so worth reading.

I received a free proof copy of this novel from the publisher for review.

When Detective Cal Hooper moves from Chicago to Ireland, he is hoping to put his past in the force behind him and settle into the quiet, rural life. As he renovates his fix-upper home and gets to know the townsfolk, he befriends a thirteen year old who as it turns out has an ulterior motive. Trey’s older brother is missing and they want Cal to investigate. Cal promised himself when he left Chicago, his police career was done, but can Trey convince him to come out of retirement for one last investigation?

It has been a long while since I rated a book 5 stars, but this one is utterly deserving. Being a fan of Tana French’s work, I was expecting a gritty, twisted thriller. What I got was a surprisingly heartwarming storyline with the perfect amount of mystery. For the first time in a long while, I haven’t got a bad thing to say about this book!

I was so excited to read this book as French is one of my favourite writers..Once again French has written a fantastic book that will keep you gripped. You won't be disappointed by this book and its one of my favourite books of 2020

** spoiler alert ** 3.5 stars


Quite the slow burner this one,you think not much has happened in the first 150 pages,but we've set the scene and put the players in their place.
Small town village life seemed rather welcoming of an outsider I thought,but when you look deeper,there's always a slight threat under everything,a definite air of tension to a lot of the interactions.
Whilst the friendship of Cal and Trey is central to the whole book, it was Mart that really interested me.
My favourite French book for a while

The Searcher by Tana French
Publisher - Viking
Publication date - 5th November 2020
Thanks to @netgalley and Viking for an advanced copy of the book.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Searcher’s plot deals with a retired Chicago cop, Cal, who moves to Ireland to lead a quiet life. Of course that doesn’t happen as a local boy, Trey, begins to watch him and then pleads with him to help find his brother Brendan who has disappeared.
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It’s set in Ireland but in the deep countryside and it definitely portrays the small village life with everyone one knowing when you even fart! There are some quite tender moments depicting this community aspect. However, this book definitely shows the best and the worse sides of living in this type of area. My dad’s area was the exact same. Ran a business and lived and loved there for over 20 years and was still an outsider.
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This book was all about the characters though. It was very slow paced so the thing that kept you reading were the people whose story was being told. Cal and Trey were the stars for me and surely they were for all readers. Trey was the epitome of a kid who is given a bad label due to their family and having it dictate their actions and life. But really what you saw was a inner core of steel, someone who needed support and love. Someone who just wanted to be useful and be a kid. I think Cal was someone who realised that he shouldn’t make the same mistakes again with Trey as he did with his own child. But the loyalty and determine to figure out what happened to Brendan was a delight to read.
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You might read the blurb and think this is a police procedural with a twist - he is just retired. But it’s not at all. It’s more than that. It’s a study of character, motives, hopes and dreams and the crashing burden of reality. At times the power of the descriptive writing made me feel claustrophobic and at other times joyful. It’s definitely one you should read!

The Searcher by Tana French is the first book I've read by this author and it certainly won't be the last.
The novel tells the tale of Cal, who has recently relocated to a remote part of Ireland having retired from the Chicago police. All he wants to do is renovate his house and enjoy some peace and quiet. Yet Trey has different plans that involve him using his old police skills to search for a missing brother.

To be honest, this is not an adrenaline-fuelled crime novel, but things get under your skin - a bit like the damp mists and drizzle that prevail throughout the book. It is wonderfully atmospheric and there is an ongoing tension that continues to build, albeit slowly. Cal is a fish out of water in a village that holds dark secrets and where he no longer carries a police badge to back up his actions. He also carries some emotional wounds that mean he won't turn his back on someone needing his help.

Characters and setting are developed wonderfully and as well as the crime aspect, there are warm and tender moments and an ending that makes you wonder what you would do in such circumstances.

Thanks to the author, NetGalley and the publisher for an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

My rating is 4.5 stars.

A wonderfully atmospheric read that draws you in to Cal's world. You like him and trust what he is trying to achieve. The author's use of language paints very clear pictures in your mind.

I enjoyed this unpredictable thriller from Tana French but felt the story line was a little bit over-exaggerated for effect. Whilst the location and weather played important parts, I didn't really engage with any characters properly.

Having watched and enjoyed the recent TV adaptation 'Into the Woods', it was with a high degree of anticipation that I began to read my very first Tana French novel. From the outset I was riveted by the slow burn pace of the narrative which follows the lives of retired Chicago detective, Cal Hooper who has decamped to a remote farmhouse in rural Ireland in search of a fresh start. Through his encounter with troubled teenager, Trey, Cal reluctantly becomes embroiled in the disappearance of Trey's brother. Unlike much modern crime fiction which thrive on convoluted plots which twist and turn to defy the reader's expectations - 'The Searcher' does the opposite and is the braver and more compelling for this. The plot is deceptively simple and the tension is built purely through the quality of the writing. Tana French's prose excels in slowly peeling back the veneer of a close-knit community to reveal a sinister underbelly which emanates a sense of claustrophobia which had me utterly gripped. Thank you to Netgalley and Penguin General UK for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

The Searcher is a stand-alone book by Tana French but if you’re expecting it to be like The Dublin Murder series you will be disappointed as it is not. The story revolves around Cal, a middle aged ex Chicago cop who disillusioned with his life there and after a painful divorce, buys a dilapidated Cottage in rural West Ireland in the expectation of a slow and peaceful life in an idyllic setting. Cal begins to refurbish his home in Ardnakelty where he soon meets and becomes friendly with his nearest neighbour Mart and some of the other townsfolk, although it does take a short while for them to become less suspicious of the newcomer and accept him. Into his life comes Trey, a 13 year old . Trey’s 19 year old brother Brendan has gone missing some months ago. Trey is especially close to, Brendan who has disappeared without leaving any note and seemingly without trace. The townsfolk and Trey know Cal is an ex cop and Trey wants hi!m to find her brother. Trey is tenacious in the quest for answers and persuades Cal to use his investigative skills to get to the truth. Certain members of the town have secrets to hide and prefer they stay hidden. The book is not a fast paced thriller, it is more of a slow burn. The author paints a believable picture of a bucolic rural Ireland. The main characters are well drawn and clearly depicted making it easy to empathise with 13 year old Trey and the need for answers. You can get a sense of the anguish Trey feels and also the simmering anger beneath, feeling confused between not knowing what has happened to Brendan and also a sense of betrayal that he has not made contact. . The story is well written, the prose flows naturally. You get a sense of the undercurrent, the tension in the town, the feeling that all is not as it seems to be. lAlthough not a thriller it was still an enjoyable book. Thanks to NetGalley, Penguin UK for this ARC in return for my honest review