A gritty mystery novel set in the rural Irish countryside


Ex-cop Cal Hooper decides to retire early from his job on the police force and moves from crime-filled Chicago to a dilapidated cottage in an isolated Irish village. His plans are to leave behind his old life of catching criminals, setting the world to right, and instead spending his days doing up the cottage and walking in the countryside. However, it is not long before Trey, a local boy, seeks Cal out for help – his older brother is missing, and no one in the village seems to care. Unable to ignore his cop instincts, Cal reluctantly agrees to investigate the teenager’s disappearance. He quickly discovers that there may be something sinister going on in this rural community, and the tightly knit locals don’t take kindly to strangers prying into their business.

This was a slow burner, but overall, also an enjoyable mystery novel that focussed more on subtlety and suspense than thrills and action. I found Cal to be an interesting and well-written character, who, despite being weary from his long years on the force, can’t turn his back on an unsolved case despite knowing that getting involved won’t do him any good. A refreshing change from most crime novels was that the rural setting and Cal’s retirement meant he had to rely on his wits and cunning to investigate the disappearance, rather than the usual team of well-trained officers and unlimited police resources that often crop up in these types of books. The atmosphere of the Irish countryside was also very well-rendered, and I enjoyed how the author managed to make the reader feel both the sense of tranquillity and idyllic calm that the countryside brings and the unnerving sensation of being an outsider and not quite trusted by those around you. The camaraderie and loyalty that the village locals have for each other transitions very subtly throughout the story to a slightly more menacing ‘us and them’ attitude against Cal. His relationship with Trey was quite endearing as well.

Unfortunately, the plot was a bit slow-paced, which meant it took a little while to get through the book. I also felt that some aspects of the story didn’t feel like they belonged in modern times, with some of the characters behaving as if they lived several decades ago. This could be due to the countryside setting, but it didn’t quite work for me. Finally, the ending felt like a bit of an anti-climax after such a long, slow, build-up, but it did tie things together nicely.

In conclusion, I enjoyed The Searcher and would read more by this author, who clearly has a good eye for engaging characters.


Daenerys


Elite Reviewing Group received a copy of this book to review.

This was a brilliantly written, well paced novel.
The storyline was different to most psychological thrillers and I found it truly interesting and engrossing right to the very end.
Each of the characters had their own unique personalities with many layers that made them realistic and really pulled you in and made you feel a connection with them and caring about what happened to them throughout.
A thoroughly enjoyable, thrilling read that I would certainly recommend to others.

What a wonderful novel - I thoroughly enjoyed it. The subject matter was interesting & different, I really enjoyed the characters who had big personalities and I cared what happened to them. It was thrilling and compelling and so much more than just a psychological thriller.

I had to quit this book halfway through and admit to myself that if I wasn't engaged by that point, I never would be. It was so slow, I kept checking my progress and felt like I'd been reading forever. The final straw was reading the reviews and realising that nothing really happens until 80% onwards and that's about 200 pages away, so it's a DNF for me.

A slow burning and well written novel that kept hooked.
I think that Tana French is a master storyteller and I loved the setting and the great characters.
The plot is tightly knitted and found it highly entertaining.
Strongly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

Chicago cop is burnt out. His marriage is over, his daughter is grown up & he is disillusioned with life. Deciding to make a clean break her buys a rundown cottage in the West of Ireland with the desire to just renovate it, fish & shoot rabbit. Like any small town, everyone else knows everyone's business. The locals seem friendly & he goes about his days. But a cop's instinct doesn't leave you & Cal is sure he's sure he's being watched. Along comes Trey wanting him to find their missing brother & doesn't look like taking no for an answer. Cal soon stirs up a hornet's nest- perhaps this place isn't as peaceful as he thought!

I must be one of the few folk who have never heard of Tana French, so I started this with no preconceptions. There is no denying that this is a slow moving read, but for me that was one of its appeal. I loved the characters & wondered how things looked a year or so down the road- always a sign of a great read for me! Thanks to Netgalley & the publisher for letting me read & review this book- loved it!

I was looking forward to reading this tana french book and was not disappointed. Not as compelling, I found, as the wych elm, but still an engaging read suffused with mystery and strongly drawn characters.

A brilliant slow burning, atmospheric & moody mystery. The descriptions & plot builds in the usual French style that I’ve appreciated in her previous novels.

I found this slow to start, then slow in the middle and slow at the end. I kept waiting for something to happen. I had worked out the plot by halfway. The characters are interesting and you do care about them but that is about it. Not for me I'm afraid.

4★
“Cal stands there in his back field for a while, with the phone in his hand. He wants to punch something, but he knows that would do nothing but bust his knuckles. Having that much sense makes him feel old.”

He’s 48, not old, but bone-weary from life as a Chicago cop who is missing his ex-wife (she split) and adult daughter, both a world away from his new home and his back field in the backwoods of Ireland. He is definitely, defiantly retired. No more crims, no more suspecting everything that moves. However. . .

“Too many years on the beat in bad hoods, now farm hands look like gangbangers.”

I say “backwoods”, because it’s a term often used in the States to refer to an old-fashioned, probably poor, possibly hillbilly area. People vary from salt-of-the-earth, old-school (and all those hyphenated phrases) to a few folks with a screw loose who may have grown up there or who may have ended up there, removed from society, as much for society's sake as their own.

The story moves slowly, which I enjoyed at first, getting used to Cal and his attempts to smooth out his life as he restores the old furniture and old house he’s bought on the strength of photos on a website.

“Landscape is one of the few things he knows of where the reality doesn’t let you down. The West of Ireland looked beautiful on the internet; from right smack in the middle of it, it looks even better. The air is rich as fruitcake, like you should do more with it than just breathe it; bite off a big mouthful, maybe, or rub handfuls of it over your face.”

Sigh . . . It looks like he made the right choice, but he can’t put his ex-wife and daughter out of his mind. I have to say that was ok the first few times he thought about them, but I think I could have done without so much of them in the story. The locals have been pleasant enough to him.

“Up until last week he felt that he had been, if not exactly welcomed with open arms, at least accepted as a mildly interesting natural phenomenon, like maybe a seal that had taken up residence in the river.”

Then he hears noises outside his house at night and finally discovers Trey, a shy, nervous 13-year-old kid who seems to adopt him. As Trey starts helping with the refinishing of an old desk, Cal learns that big brother Brendan Reddy has disappeared without so much as a good-bye note for Trey, who adores him.

Cal doesn’t appreciate the tingling of his copper’s nerves, but he can’t help it. He begins to befriend some of the locals and decides to check out Trey’s family, high up in the hills. On the way home, his friendly, nosy neighbour spots him.

“‘Went for a walk up the mountain. Stood in a patch of bog, though, so I came home.’ Cal holds up his wet boot.

‘Watch yourself around them bogs, now,’ Mart says, inspecting the boot. Today he’s wearing a dirty orange baseball cap that says boat hair don’t care. ‘You don’t know their ways. Step in the wrong patch and you’ll never step out again. They’re fulla tourists; eat ’em like sweeties, so they do.’ He shoots Cal a wicked slantwise look.

‘Gee,’ ,Cal says. ‘I didn’t realise I was taking my life in my hands.’

‘And that’s before you start on the mountainy men. They’re all stone mad, up there; split your head open as soon as look at you.’

‘Tourist board wouldn’t like you,’ Cal says.

‘Tourist board hasn’t been up them mountains. You stay down here, where we’re civilised.’”

Stone mad is not what he was looking for in Ireland. Nor was he looking for a “case” or a kid to restore or refinish along with his furniture. What he expected was more people like the match-making shopkeeper and other warm, Irish souls. A rather attractive woman with new puppies wasn’t expected either.

I can’t decide if I like having those people in the story or not. Maybe I did. I was thrown completely by a sudden reveal more than half-way through, which made things more difficult for him and for which he needed some help from them, so all in all, I enjoyed the book. But without French's Irish atmosphere, it would have been much less satisfying.

Thanks to NetGalley and Penguin/Viking for the review copy from which I’ve quoted.

Simply brilliant, this was a fantastic read, real edge of your seat stuff. This is only my second book by Tana French but I will definitely read more. 5 stars

A little predictable in places, what I love most about this book is that its a well developed slow-burn. The characters and the town are very vivid in my mind and I liked the care that was taken with establishing relationships. I've heard some of Tana French's other books are a little more twisty so I'll definitely have to check those out.

3.5 stars

This is a moody, character driven, slow burn mystery. The kind that Tana French does so well. She builds the scene, creates the tension and leads you down a dark garden path. There are twists along they way (one that I did not see coming). The ending, however, did not satisfy - it felt a bit bland. I wanted the resolution to be darker.

I've loved Tana French's writing in the past, but for some reason, this one didn't quite work for me. I did finish it (which means I didn't hate it, because if a book isn't working for me, I will just put it aside) - but it took a while to get engaged with it. It did grow on me, but still not one I'd rave about.

So I won't be publishing a review, because I don't like to give negative reviews, but mine would be lukewarm.

Cal moves to a remote Irish village after twenty five years in the Chicago police force.
He's come there to renovate a house.
But a local boy has gone missing and his sister asks him to help find him as nobody seems bothered they think he's just gone away.
As Cal delves into this case he unearths a dark side to this village.
A good read
Thanks NetGalley

An ex-cop from Chicago named Cal moves to a remote Irish village after leaving the force and getting divorced. While he’s there he’s approached by a young villager who wants help finding a lost brother who has disappeared and he then becomes involved in the darker side of village life but it’s not all bad because he meets a nice woman with puppies.

It’s quite hard to take this book seriously. First off, Cal is a kind of joke ex-cop, probably grizzled and definitely world-weary who could take you down as soon as look at you, knows right and wrong and has a tendency to get involved in trouble. He doesn’t really seem like the sort of person to move to Ireland for some peace and quiet.

Also this bit of Ireland is a sort of fictional place which I’m not sure many Irish people would either recognise or want to be associated with. You kind of expect fiddle players in the pub, little people who speak in riddles, and families where a child can disappear and, sure and begorrah, it’s just the way of the world. The farmers are a bit weird as well. Father Ted would probably be at home here!

Then, there’s the plot which grinds along but you can be sure that the local police will be sleepy, that people know when to watch the wall and to keep their mouths shut and there are still remote deserted cottages in idyllic locations which haven’t been bought up by up-and-coming Dubliners.

Anyway, Cal works his way through all of this and finds out the unlikely truth which turns out to be quite contemporary in tone and everyone is sort of happy then, so he can definitely have one of the puppies and that means he’s settled and accepted. It wasn’t really my cup of tea, or maybe poteen, but I can see how it might press a few buttons for other readers who like whimsical books about the Irish and gruff cops!

Cal is retired from the Chicago PD after 25 years, he is divorced and has a daughter. He is looking for a quiet life and moves to a remote village in Ireland, in a rundown cottage that he is hoping to renovate.

Thirteen year old Trey approaches Cal as he has heard from the village jungle drums that he is a police officer. Trey’s brother Brendan has gone missing and no one seems to be doing anything about it.

At first Cal just thinks Brendan has wandered off,. After Cal being warned off he realises there is something more sinister at play.

Thank you to Netgalley for my copy in exchange for a review.

Interesting, Unique and a book I will be collecting for my forever shelf I have found this one hard to put down and have been completely captivated.
I adore the writing style, plot and characters. A great book!

“He enjoys this rain. It has no aggression to it; its steady rhythm and the scents it brings in through the windows gentle the house’s shabbiness, giving it a homey feel. He’s learned to see the landscape changing under it, greens turning richer and wildflowers rising. It feels like an ally, rather than the annoyance it is in the city.”

The Searcher is the second stand-alone novel by award-winning Irish author, Tana French. Cal Hooper is settling into his dilapidated house on a piece of land near the tiny village of Ardnakelty in the west of Ireland. He’s enjoying the challenge of restoring the place to liveable, and walks in the bracing country air. The locals are more welcoming than he had expected, and he looks forward to fishing, hunting rabbits for stew, and making friends with a treeful of rooks.

He’s also enjoying the fact that his “mental alarm systems were switched off, the way he wanted them” but, as he works on mending an old desk out in the yard with his grandfather’s tools, “the back of his neck flared. The back of Cal’s neck got trained over twenty-five years in the Chicago PD. He takes it seriously” so he waits patiently until the cause, a young teen, gains the confidence to show a face, and even longer, to make a request: worries over the disappearance, six months earlier, of an older brother, plague this younger sibling.

Trey Reddy is convinced that nineteen-year-old Brendan, who would never have left without saying where he was going, has been kidnapped, but the Reddy Family’s poor reputation almost guarantees dismissal by the Guard. Cal considers it likely that the young man has run: either to something better than the village can promise; or from some threat, perhaps for something he has done. Could those Dublin drug boys in the pub be involved? Here, though, Cal has no authority, no resources.

Quite contrary his every intention, Cal finds himself making what he believes are subtle enquiries about Brendan Reddy. Of course, in a tiny village like Ardnakelty: “A guy can’t pick his nose around here without the whole townland telling him to wash his hands” and he finds himself on the end of an equally subtle warning off. He’s made Trey a promise: will he now leave it there? Because “It feels like a vast, implacable failing in his character that he can’t come up with just one good solution to offer this scrawny, dauntless kid.”

This plays out against a background of hard-drinking local farmers, sheep being mutilated in the night and the youth who don’t escape to the city tending towards either mischief or suicide. And in the back of his mind, forty-eight-year-old Cal is still haunted by the failure of his marriage and concerns for the daughter he has somehow apparently let down.

Whatever readers might expect from Tana French, this one is no fast-paced, action-packed thriller; in store is a slow burn read that allows the reader to get to know the protagonist well, to understand this principled ex-cop, his philosophy of life and his observations: “around here mockery is like rain: most of the time it’s either present or incipient, and there are at least a dozen variants, ranging from nurturing to savage, and so subtly distinguished that it would take years to get the hang of them all”. The support cast, too, is a pleasure to meet: quirky villagers of whom Cal takes their measure to tailor his words and actions to fit. Nonetheless, the plot is intriguing, with red herrings and a twist or two to keep it interesting.

The Irish landscape itself is a character in this novel, and French’s descriptive prose is often exquisite: “The next morning is all soft mist, dreamy and innocent, pretending yesterday never happened.” With more than one local intent on matchmaking Cal with available women, and a poteen party, there’s plenty of dry and sometimes dark humour, not the least in Cal’s inner monologue, but also in some of the dialogue: “Face on her like a bulldog licking piss off a nettle.” Utterly enthralling.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Penguin UK.

Wasn't as impressed as I thought I would be. There was no surprise factor as it's supposed to be a mystery and thriller book.
That being said, I'm still giving it three-star since I enjoyed the language and flow of Tana French's writing.
This was my Tana French novel and I was expecting more. I would definitely read her other books as they seem to be more promising.