The Hunter by Tana French is the second book in the Cal hooper series. It continues the story of retired American detective Cal Hooper now living in the in a remote Irish village of Ardnakely in the West coast of Ireland. He is now settled in the community and has a relationship with Lena and got close to her son Trey and is teaching him some carpentry skills. When Trey’s father comes home after living in London for 4 years, with an Englishman in tow. Claiming that that is gold in the surrounding hills, and he has come back to the village with this businessman to claim it. Are they being serious or is it a scam?
I didn’t realise at first that this was the second book in the series and If I had known I would not have requested it. I found it hard to connect to this as the author did not relate anything that occurred in the first book to the second one. So, if you have this book, I advise you to read the first book first. This is not a bad book, but it is also awfully slow. Too slow for me even though I found the descriptions of the locations etc well written. For these reasons I could not finish it. Maybe I will go back and read it again when I have read the first book in the future. 3 stars from me.

Having read and enjoyed the previous novel I was delighted to receive an invitation to read this via Netgalley!

As with the precious novel in this series The Searcher, this is a very very slow burn as a novel. However I just didn’t find the storyline as compelling.

That being said this author has a wonderful way of creating a scene, and developing very complex character so would recommend for fans of this type of novel.

This is book 2 of the Cal Hooper series and having read the first book and really enjoyed it I was thrilled to receive the ARC of this one and it’s just as good as the first. It’s a slow burn of a read and I must admit it took time to get into the story but the character development in the read was fantastic and once the story got going then the pages started to fly. I love the fictional setting of Ardnakelty it feels so real and I just wish I could visit it’s so well described and the people are a dream !
It was good to see how Cal the retired Chicago cop has really settled in but the character of Trey is by far my favourite she is fabulously crafted by Tana French as is the whole book.
So a read that is much more than a thriller its one to savour and I’m looking forward to the next.
My thanks to NetGalley and Penguin General UK, Viking for giving me the opportunity to read the ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

Tana French is now firmly on my list of must read authors. Honestly, I opened this book and it was like the characters were just right there waiting for me to come back. It took no time at all to fall back in love with this remote part of Ireland and all the perfectly formed but flawed characters. This is one of those books you want to read fast as the story is so compelling but also don’t want to finish as you just don’t want to leave their World. All the characters are just so real, and compelling. Every character plays their part in this story to perfection. The story is just so cleverly told and never predictable. I’ve thought long and hard about what it is that makes this story so compelling and I think that it is because you get a real sense of love and hope underpinning the story despite so much trauma. This is definitely going to be one of my favourite books of 2024.

Just as thrilling as The Searcher, where we previously met Cal and Trey, The Hunter is a fast paced story set in rural Ireland.

Wild and lost teenager Trey's errant father returns home and disrupts everyone's lives with his get-rich scheme to entice the locals to search for gold. American ex-detective Cal is settled into the rural community and finds himself tangled up with the scheme.

As with all good thrillers, this is one of those stories you're going to struggle to put down.

I’m an avid fan of everything Ms. French writes and so I was thrilled to receive this ARC for review. And once I picked it up, I couldn’t put it down.

As with all her novels, I quickly became invested in the lives of the people. Cal, Lena and Trey start to feel like family, and even the minor characters add to the tension in the pages. The characterization is insightful and emotional and the beautiful descriptions of the landscape creates an atmospheric element that almost adds to the cast.

The pace may be slow, but the clever dialogue keeps pushing it forward. The conversations in the pub and in Cal’s fields form a vital part of the flow of the story. They were created so intricately, yet effortlessly, that I felt like I was included.

It’s simply one of those novels you can’t stop reading, at the same time wishing it will never end.

Full of suspense which kept me turning the page. An intriguing read. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for letting me review this book.

I thank the publisher and NetGalley for an advance review copy in return for a fair review. I have acquired a number of Tana French's series books but, for no good reason, not got around the reading them yet. But having read this standalone novel and enjoyed the book and the writing style I will push them up the "to read" pile [which is very lengthy!]. This is set in very rural Ireland and conveys a great sense of place, especially the shop and the pub. The main characters are very well drawn, both those you are meant to empathise with and the "villains". The plot contains some very impressive twists and the writing carries it on nicely. Recommended

This kept me on the edge of my seat and was incredibly suspenseful. I didn’t want to put this book down once I got going - Tana French has done it again!

Another great read from Tana French. You can't help but get immersed in the Irish village setting. Being Irish I can fully relate to this mentality. Cal brings a touch of American to it which is also very relatable. A great yarn! I have to say though that the word crack has been spelled incorrectly (although crack is also acceptable) on a number of occasions, it's craic when referring to Irish fun times. Tana has the Irishisms down to a tee! Enjoy the book and thank you for the advanced reading copy

I received a free copy of, The Hunter. by Tana French, from the publisher and Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Cal is in Ireland after retiring as a cop in Chicago, he has a new relationship, everything is right with the world until Trey a teenager Cal has befriended, father comes to town. I did not like the swearing in this book, it made the story hard to follow.

I seem to have liked "The Searcher" by Tana French more than I liked "The Hunter". Unfortunately I didn't realise that this book was a sequel as I can't remember the plot of the first book. Having said that, characters are likeable and I really enjoyed the relationship between Cal and Trey. Tana French is still an author I will return to but this series is not my favourite of hers, it is a very slow burn... so much so that I was beginning to think it wasn't a crime book as up to 60% of the way through there wasn't a murder!

This sequel to The Searcher takes us back to Cal and Trey in rural Ireland for a slow-burning mystery. With fantastic character building and use of setting, Tana French’s writing is as exquisite as ever. Thank you Net Galley and the publishers for this ARC.

I was looking forward to reading this book having read Tana French's book The Searcher, which this book follows on from, and it did not disappoint. French has such an easy way of drawing the characters in these books that it feels like she's simply writing about real people. It feels effortless.

The book centres on Cal, a former US cop who has moved to a small village in Ireland in search of a more peaceful, sedate life. I love Cal's character because there is so much to identify with. He has found happiness in small things - firstly doing up his cottage in The Searcher, and now doing work as a carpenter with his young apprentice, Trey, while enjoying an easy going and uncomplicated relationship with his partner, Lena.

At one point in this book Cal is doing some mundane thing and reflects on how boring his life sounds - but immediately also acknowledges that this is exactly how he wants it to be, and I felt that I could not agree more. There is something comforting in reading about his day-to-day life.

French can be quite understated in how she writes aspects of this, but the book feels more powerful for that. For instance, we don't get a lot of detail about his and Lena's relationship, but the bits we do get speak volumes. Less is definitely more.

And Lena is a brilliant character too. French has created a very "strong" female character without ending up resorting to stereotypes or caricatures. Lena has forged her own way in life and basically does what she wants, despite living in a very small village where literally everyone has their opinions about how she should be living.

One other really positive thing to note is the character development of Trey's mother, Sheila. It turns out that there's a lot more to her than the surface appearance of exhausted mother constantly occupied by housework, cooking and childcare, and it's lovely to read Trey's gradual discovery of this in the book.

Anyway - onto the actual plot! Cal's desire for a quiet life is interrupted by the arrival back in the village of Trey's father, a slippery character who is clearly in trouble and is now bringing the trouble back home. Over the course of the book it becomes clear that Johnny needs cash, and has dreamed up an extravagant scheme in order to try and con the locals into giving it to him.

The plot is actually quite slow moving, but I didn't see this as a bad thing at all. It kind of fitted with the mood of the book, where time has somewhat slowed down. Some who like their plots more pacy might find this a bit frustrating, but I felt that it made things more realistic. It's not outlandish - but this is a good thing. The plot reads like something that could actually happen.

It honestly does feel like a very real description of real people's lives and the little details - such as Trey's trips to the shop or what her next meal is (as a hungry teenager food is often at the forefront of her mind) actually helps with that.

For people who haven't read The Searcher, I would recommend reading that and then following up with this, although it does work as a standalone novel. But the characters are so great that I think readers would benefit from reading about them from the start. If you're looking for novels to get lost in, these are the ones for you.

A proper character-led thriller that is a satisfying read. I really like Cal, Lena and Trey and wanted them all to comfort out ok at the end. A good yarn well told.

Page 159 - the first time something slightly interesting happened. It lasted less than a page.

Page 246 - we finally get a murder! Woohoo! Oh, wait, it's someone who I don't care about and have exactly zero interest in who killed them? Fab.

God, this book was a chore. I'm sorry to keep harping on about this, but I do so miss the days of the Dublin Murder Squad novels. They were just so deliciously reliably good. We'll probably never get another, but I shall keep on dreaming.

As a writer, Tana French is a waffler, but I didn't mind when the characters and mysteries were so interesting, the pages and pages of dialogue so witty and delightful. It's not that I dislike Cal and Trey but I just don’t care about them enough to sit through all the wordiness and waffle. And, man, the plot here was so uninteresting to me.

Basically, Trey's dad Johnny has returned, bringing along with him an Englishman and a wild tale about buried gold in Ardnakelty. A massive chunk of this book is about him trying to convince the local men to come aboard his scheme, and Cal and Trey being suspicious of his intentions. I was never into it. It has taken a while for me to get into a couple of French’s past books (well, The Witch Elm and The Searcher), but there's usually a moment when I do settle into the story. That never came here.

I just did not care about buried gold or Johnny's scheming. I did not care about the dead person. When the dead body appeared, I actually took a moment to think "is there anyone in this book who would actually make an interesting culprit to this murder?" I came up with one person and, hey... guess what?

It's interesting. French has worked with a much smaller pool of suspects before and made it more difficult to guess the culprit. I thought it was fairly obvious here.

This is a lovely book to read. It combines great characters, great story and captures the essence of a small Irish village that exists just far enough outside of the mainstream world to maintain its own rules and way of life. I particularly enjoyed the way Cal an ex Chicago detective learns to live within this very particular world. Excellent characters. A really good read.

As ever a cracking read form Ms Hunter set in rural Ireland.
The descriptive nature of Ms Hunter's writing actually transports me to the location.
Trey's father returns from London with a stranger in tow claiming their is gold on the local's land.
A story of misleading folk, conning them out of money and giving false hope.
With this background what could go wrong ?
A cracking tale with a twist I for one didn't see coming.
Solid four stars.

I wasn't aware there was a first part in the series, but I had an inkling with all the subtle references to Trey's older brother Brennan and Cal's history with Mart.

No matter, this book can be read as a stand-alone and I greatly enjoyed my time in Ardnakelty, a small Irish town that's about to be dragged into a cock-and-bull scheme, concocted by the newly returned Johnny Reddy, a known good-for-nothing - who also happens to be Theresa's/'Trey's father.

And although Cal, an American ex-detective, isn't that - he feels very protective of Trey, since he was there to pick up the pieces in the years Johnny Reddy was gone and he's trying to get the girl on the right path. The story is well-written, with a slow beginning which only adds to the feeling of being in a small Irish town.

Besides the main characters, I especially enjoyed getting to know Mart. He's very relatable and I liked his accessive use of the word eejit.

Thanks for the advance copy!

I was supposed to be reading my list in order of publication date but I couldn't resist making this one my read over the Christmas break. Tana French is a fantastic writer. I was absolutely delighted to be back with Cal and Trey again. While the plot keeps you guessing, it's best savoured slowly. There are so many layers to this story and the characters are all beautifully well done. So real and so identifiable but never caricatures. Mart stands out but they all have their own personalities and the pub scenes are brilliantly done. The relationship Cal has with everyone - with Trey, with Lena, with Mart, with the locals is central to the story, while Trey is the perfect mix of stubborn, emotional, mature and yet immature. Her family and home really come to life and we can understand why she does what she does, even when we don't agree or want to scream at her to think about what she's doing. The plot itself is clever and crazy and I really enjoyed watching it play out. It's such a great read that I was sorry to finish it.