Great read all in all. Did not go where I expected it to, and has a slightly lighter tone to it than Tana French's other titles. Main character written especially well!

This is the first Tana French novel that I have read and I was pleasantly surprised. The book is well written, describing places dialects and people in rural Ireland. As others have said, the story line is a slow burner. It is not really a thriller ( not in my experience) but that doesn’t detract from the enjoyment of a well written book.

Tana French offers a moderately paced, intensely descriptive mystery set in Ireland. The narrative has more of a noir feel to it than that of a traditional mystery as the plot is character driven and holds tight a sort of moral ambiguity giving it that darker edge. Some of the dialogue is a bit verbose which draws out the pace of the plot. Those looking for that climatic finale will not find it here. Recommended as a good piece of literature. 4 stars

Thank you to #NetGalley for the ARC of #TheSearcher which was read and reviewed voluntarily by Wayward Readers Book Blog.

A beautifully written, slow burn of a novel, The Searcher is rich with detail bringing the rural Irish setting vividly to life. It's packed full of unique, memorable and perfectly imperfect characters and driven by a compelling storyline that keeps you guessing and tugs on the heartstrings. Highly recommended.

Legendary storyteller comes back with a slow-burn mystery which will make the reader literally feel like they've been teleported to rural Ireland.

his is my first book by Tana French, but with so many of my favorite authors calling her an icon, I was beyond excited to get my hands on her new standalone.

This book is about a retired American detective Cal who moves to a cottage in a small mountain village in Ireland. He's finished with his career... or so he thinks, because when a boy comes to him, saying that his brother is missing, and the local police hasn't done anything about it, Cal can't just stay a bystander, and so he uncovers many local secrets which perhaps should have stayed buried...

Tana French does an excellent job with character development and setting characterization, which is what The Searcher is heavily based around. The mountain village comes alive on the pages while the reader begins to really care about Cal. On the other hand, while the plot is completely unique and shocking many a time, I would definitely call it a slow burn. Many readers will enjoy this pace, but I personally wished it was less drawn out because then, this mystery/thriller would have been more thrilling.

*Thank you to the Publisher for a free advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

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.

I found this a difficult book on which to provide an objective review.
For me, I emphasise me here and not necessarily many other readers, I found it somewhat slow and lacking enough events and twists. It felt like it could have been located in the American mid-west and not Ireland.
I did enjoy the book though and it is very well written
The chapters run in time sequence, not the common approach of 1 flashback chapter and 1 'now' chapter or 1 character 1 chapter and 1 character 2 chapter etc.
I found myself getting involved with Cal and Trey but other characters seem to be very much on the periphery except for Mart who is exceedingly difficult to work out.
I guess my main criticism is the lack of a 'wow didn't see that coming moment' but nevertheless a very good which I hope does very well when published

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