I am a huge fan of Tana French's, and have loved almost all her books so far. Unfortunately, i found i am unable to say the same for The Searchers. This book had me feeling difficult to get into right from the beginning and u had to try twice before i got the hang of it and started reading. But even then, i find i am not completely invested in the novel. I am 50% done and i realise i don't care about the characters or the person missing. So, this is a dnf for me. But there is some great writing here and French seems to capture. the essense of the Irish wilderness very well

Would Cal give up or would he help the young, heartbroken girl find her brother? Had he gone away, been kidnapped or killed? A story of community and resilience.

4.5 stars. I have read and loved all of Tana French's books, and this standalone is no exception. I adore all things Irish, so you can imagine how much I enjoyed the rural Irish setting, the locals with their Irish vernacular and Irish customs - Sing Songs and poteen in the pub down the road. I also really liked Cal Hooper, a recently retired and divorced Chicago detective, who just bought a dilapidated house outside of the small Irish town, expecting to finally be able to just relax and enjoy the beautiful scenery. As our very likable protagonist soon finds out all is not as it seems, and the best laid plans often go awry.

Although this is still not what you would call a fast-paced thriller, it definitely included more action than her 2018 offering, The Witch Elm. I would say this is now my fourth favorite book by Tana, with number one to three being: Faithful Place, Broken Harbor and In the Woods. The only reason this is not rate higher in the sequence is because I still miss the focus on the complex relationships of the detectives in The Dublin Murder Squad series.

This is a must read if you enjoy literary thrillers, and The Searcher is definitely a contender for my favorite mystery for 2020.

Cal Hooper, divorced, father of one, retired Chicago cop moves to a quiet village in Ireland, he speaks to his neighbour, Mart, Noreen from the shop and a couple of other people. He spends his time doing up his home which he bought sight unseen.

His daily routine is hindered when he feels he is being watched, eventually he is approached by Trey Reddy who wants Cal to find out what happened to Brendan Reddy who disappeared one day and is assumed to have just left the village to find his fortune elsewhere.

Unfortunately, Cal opens a can of worms in the village, and no one is being honest with the truth.

I hadn't read Tana French before, and to be totally honest I am not sure I would again. The story is definitely a slow burner, for pages and pages, not very much happens. There is an awful lot of descriptive prose which does drag on, I did skim read some of the pages.

The story, for me, wasn't greatly original, in fact for a lot of the time I was convinced I had read it before. The ending was fairly predictable, but also left some things unanswered.

Thank you to NetGalley and to Penguin General UK - Fig Tree, Hamish Hamilton, Viking, Penguin Life, Penguin Business for giving me the chance to read the book in exchange for an honest review.

I loved The Searcher. Tana French is a master storyteller and she is on form here.

It is the tale of Cal, starting out his retirement in a new country and his interactions with the young Trey, that set the premise for this mystery novel.
The characters are very well written, I enjoyed them all, in particular Cal, Trey and Mart. I liked the interactions between the townsfolk and small town Ireland was described in great detail. Tana French is fantastic at giving her novels authenticity.

The plot was set at a reasonable pace and I was intrigued from start to finish. I wanted to get to the cusp of the matter and I thoroughly enjoyed the tale and it's outcome.

Tana French writes incredibly well. She has a way of drawing the reader in and making them a part of the story. This is a great skill to have and she has once again delivered and excellent book.

Thank you to Netgalley, the publisher and the author for an advanced copy of this book.

I liked The Searcher book a lot. I found the beginning very slow and it almost plodded along until the main part of the plot kicked off, but once it did it was very engaging and intriguing. It's not like the usual mystery book I read in that it has more of a literary fiction feel to it than a straight up mystery thriller. But it was a nice change of pace. I liked the imagery and setting, Tana French really shines when she's describing settings, I loved the way she wrote the characters, where she revealed parts of their personality slowly, like a person really getting to know you. Masterfully written, very interesting.

I will be writing a full review on www.notesandanovel.com to coincide with the release date of The Searcher.

Cal Hooper has retired early from the Chicago police department and is worn out. He is divorced and has moved to Ireland to find a more peaceful life. While working to fix up his isolated home, he realises that someone is spying on him. This turns out to be Trey, a teenager from a local family with little money or prospects. They silently befriend each other. In time, Trey asks him to find out where the eldest sibling is. It seems Brandon went missing out of the blue several months previously.
It takes you about a third of the way through the book to get to this point as the author spends a lot of time slowly introducing the local Irish community and scenery. You also get to know Cal and his feelings about his daughter who is still in America. This book has violence and mystery but it’s greatest asset is the atmospheric painting of the town and the people in it. I felt like I knew what it would be like to live there. I also felt that the friendship and trust built between Cal and Trey was very well written. An enjoyable read.

A moody and subdued return to form for Tana French whose last couple of novels haven’t set my world alight like her first few did. The quiet, menacing beauty of the environment combined with Cal and Trey’s relationship sucked me in like a hoover and I chomped this one up in just a couple of sittings.

Tana French has written a brilliant stand alone novel.My favorite kind of thriller that grabs me from beginning to the end, .The author has a magic way of involving me in her tense chilling novels with characters that come alive.Highly recommend.#netgalley#the searcher

I thoroughly enjoyed this book . After 25 years in the Chicago police force & a hurtful divorce Cal Hooper has had enough. A pretty Remote place in Ireland Is the Place he chooses for his perfect escape from life as it was. He finds lots of flawed characters, strange loyalties & complexing relationships. Not quite the perfect escape he was looking for. I love the characters of Cal Trey & Mart . The story builds ever so slowly & there are lots of secrets & lies Cal needs to uncover to get to the truth . I would love a follow on book with these characters as I enjoyed it so much . Good psychological mystery .

I am a huge fan of Tana French stories and her prose. For me, all of her books were stand-alones. You could read the any book about the Dublin Murder Squat without knowing the other ones and they would work for you. So when she started to write real stand-alones, ones without any connection between them, it was not such a huge difference for me. She is not a master of suspense. Her books are no page turners. But they were always interesting, well developed and complex because of their protagonists and, of course, her exceptional writing skills. But obviously Tana French is working on her writing. Her last few books appeared to be different in style. “The Secret Place” had an abundance of metaphors and was way too slow and self-absorbed; “The Witch Elm” was similar slow and very detailed. Both books were remarkable in their own way but a bit hard to read because of their slow pace and their immense amount of details. “The Searcher” is again a different book. I would never have guessed that it was a book by Tana French. The details and the gradualness are still here but gone are the colourful metaphors.

Cal Hooper is a retired cop from Chicago. He got tired of his job, had a divorce and so he took the change to retire at the early age of 48. For some reasons he choose to spent his retirement in Ireland. He bought an old cottage and started working on it. He chose a small village to live in and he already got acquainted to the locals. He became friend with his neighbor and joins them all in the local pub. Then one day a boy shows up on his door and demands that he starts looking for his missing brother. Once a cop, always a cop, Cal gets hooked against his will about the case. He also gets attached to the child. So he starts poking around.

French’s prose is still on point and you can read the book easily. But there is not much going on. To be honest, I did not find the mystery about the disappearance of the boy that much intriguing. There is mostly not much action in French’s books. The main things are always happening in the heads of her characters. This is a character study as well and a story about the dynamics within a small town in a rural countryside.

I am not sure I like this new writing style. I was a bit underwhelmed with this thin story and all the description about working on old furniture. There are a still some parts where the old Tana French blinks through. When Cal is in the pub and people are talking you get a lot of the undercurrents there. Dialogues were always French’s strength. But unfortunately Cal spends a lot of time alone so there is not so much need for dialogues. Cal is also the most uninteresting character French created so far. As I said before, the story itself is also not so impressive and surprising.

Unfortunately, for me this was the weakest of her books so far. It is still a nice book to read but you have to enjoy a slow storytelling. It is just, when you know her other work, this one fells flat. I am still glad I read it, because I am a fan. And I keep wondering what Tana French is up to next because she seems to enjoy reinventing her writing.

I’d like to thank the publisher for sending me an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Cal Hooper has left Chicago PD and his old life, to retire to the more temperate climes and slower pace of life in rural Ireland, renovate an old farmhouse, maybe kill his own dinner, let time pass peacefully and possibly work some things out for himself. He is befriended by Trey, a kid who wants him to find sibling, and from his initial detached, surface observation of local life, is drawn further into the complexities and secrets of rural life. Uncovering those secrets is more dangerous than he imagined for him and for Trey.
I found this utterly compelling, from quite early on. The slow pace of the start lulls the reader into a sense of peace, and I. like Cal, was utterly unprepared for the shifts in pace, the creeping menace and the sense of inevitability of the denouement.
I loved the Dublin murder squad series as much for the rhythm of language and sense of place as the breathtaking plotting, and this book shares those characteristics.

'The Searcher,' by Tana French tells the story of Cal Hooper, a retired American cop, who relocates to Ireland in search of a quiet life. Initially he feels welcomed into the small town, and relaxed in the idyllic landscape. However, over time both the landscape and the people reveal their dark secrets and Cal's sense of morality is called into question.

If you haven't read a Tana French book before, I would highly recommend you read this one. She is brilliant at developing detailed, believable, and likeable characters, that get you on their side, but also make you question their decisions and motivations. She writes in a very detailed way, but at the same time she is sparing enough to give the reader room to breathe life into the characters. I got swept up in the novel and found it hard to put down. The ending will stay with me.

I started this book and thought at first it wasn’t for me, I kept going with it and after 3 chapters I was hooked ! Couldn’t put it down. It was such a great read, exciting and unpredictable.
Loved it 🙂

Oh, my! This is a fabulous read! Highly, highly recommend. 5*. It's one of those reads that I adored from first to last page and which has left me feeling like I've lost a close friend, not that I've finished.

Cal is an ex Chicago detective who moves to a small town in Ireland to escape the life of a police officer and his, still emotional feelings towards his ex-wife.
Then, a young person. Trey, arrives requesting his help as their brother has disappeared under possibly strange circumstances. What follows is a fabulously written story with sinister undertones.

The characters are brilliantly drawn, typical Irish farmers, with a harsh sense of humour and an underlying violence to their lives. Mart is Cal's closest neighbour and the one who takes him under his wing. But, are his motives genuine?
What starts as a seemingly innocent story of an American buying a rundown old farmhouse to do up as a hobby, soon turns into something else entirely.

This is such an amazing read. I loved every minute! The Irish humour and sayings made me giggle and laugh out loud and I also cried.

Congratulations to Tana French and thanks so much to NetGalley and Penguin General UK for the opportunity to preview, in exchange for this honest review. I'll be widely publicising closer to publication, but, for those of you who enjoy an excellent read - this is it! Put it on your preorder list! I read it in a 30+ degree heatwave in the Canaries, but, bet it's even better (if this were possible) in Autumn and bonfire night is the perfect time.

A slow burn of a thriller, French has written a stand-alone novel that focuses on a retired Chicago cop who moves to an Irish village for a quiet life and gets embroiled in an unsolved disappearance that could be murder.
Cal, the cop, forms an unlikely friendship with the young sibling of the missing man, and we see their relationship develop in ways that benefit both of them.
French takes her time to build up a picture of the claustrophobic small town and to get into the murder.
But the characters are compelling and well-drawn and the plot slowly develops in unexpected ways.
Recommended for those who enjoy a slow burn of a good thriller.

As a writer of mystery and suspense, Dublin-based author Tana French is in a league of her own. I like the fact that unlike many other writers of the same genre, French publishes stand-alone novels that do not require you to have read previous tomes to get a better insight into her protagonists. The Searchers, her latest novel, is a stand-alone, too. It is very different from her previous works because rather than in Dublin, the majority of the plot this time is set in Western Ireland. Also, in addition to a cast of Irish characters, The Searcher features a protagonist who is US-American.

Cal is 48 years old and has just retired from the Chicago police force. He has retired to an idyllic West Ireland village and had thought his investigative days were behind him, but he is drawn into a fresh enquiry he did not anticipate when a local boy asks for his help in investigating his brother’s disappearance. A newcomer settling into an enclosed, secretive village community is a literary trope that has been explored by many other authors, but French does a particularly good job in presenting Cal as a conflicted but believable character, and in showing the simmering tensions and secrets below the surface of the small Irish village that Cal tries to make home. From this point of view, The Searcher is not just a thriller but also a critical portrait of twenty-first century society, so should appeal to many more readers. I loved reading every page of this novel and wholly recommend it. My thanks go to the author, the publishers and NetGalley for my ARC in exchange for this honest and unbiased review.

The first book I’ve read by this author and my honest opinion is that it was utterly fantastic. It gripped me like a vice from the very start. Brilliant story which kept me engrossed the whole way through.

An interesting concept, to transplant an American ex-cop to a wild, Irish landscape and at first I wasn’t sure it would work. However, Cal Hooper shares a lot of the characteristics that the inhabitants of the village have and he fits in, after a fashion. As long as he keeps his interest to refurbishing the remote cottage he has bought and fending off the matchmaking efforts of the village shop owner he faces a cosy escape from whatever demons chased him so far away from his family, Things don’t work out quite like that.
It takes a while for the mystery to reveal itself and at times I did wonder where the author was taking the plot, but the descriptions of the area and life within it are rich and engage the reader.
I’m not too sure about a couple of plot points. One in particular threw me right out of the story, as I just can’t see someone like Cal Hooper being so unobservant as to miss the glaringly obvious! The animal killings and mutilations also seem a little out of place.
Plus points are the scenes where Cal stands as an outsider while the villagers talk, work and fight around him and the development he goes through to fit in, albeit unwillingly and with unease.
It’s a slow-burning thriller and well,worth investing the time to get to know the characters. Some of the penultimate scenes where the mystery Is revealed are tense and dark and almost folk-horror in their impact.

I absolutely loved this book! Very different and empathetically written. Cal, the Chicago Cop, sticking out like a sore thumb in a little Irish village complete with its wonderful old characters and a waif and stray teenager in need of help! I was there experiencing the countryside, the rooks, the early morning dew and the sense of isolation. All is not as it seems and I was impatient to discover the outcome though loathe to leave the people behind! More please!