In the Woods
On sale
13th November 2008
Price: £9.99
Clarion Award, 2007
Genre
When he was twelve years old, Adam Ryan went playing in the woods with his two best friends. He never saw them again. Their bodies were never found, and Adam himself was discovered with his back pressed against an oak tree and his shoes filled with blood. He had no memory of what had happened.
Twenty years on, Rob Ryan – the child who came back – is a detective in the Dublin police force. He’s changed his name. No one knows about his past. Then a little girl’s body is found at the site of the old tragedy and Rob is drawn back into the mystery. Knowing that he would be thrown off the case if his past were revealed, Rob takes a fateful decision to keep quiet but hope that he might also solve the twenty-year-old mystery of the woods.
Twenty years on, Rob Ryan – the child who came back – is a detective in the Dublin police force. He’s changed his name. No one knows about his past. Then a little girl’s body is found at the site of the old tragedy and Rob is drawn back into the mystery. Knowing that he would be thrown off the case if his past were revealed, Rob takes a fateful decision to keep quiet but hope that he might also solve the twenty-year-old mystery of the woods.
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Reviews
Sharply written and insidiously creepy, this is a mesmerising read that grabs hold of the reader from the very first page and doesn't let go until well past two in the morning.
This is a wonderfully assured and beautifully written debut novel, a multilayered psychological thriller that digs beneath the surface of ordinary lives and delivers excitement and insight in large helpings.
Lyrical and haunting
A real show-stopper of a thriller . . . Author tightens the tension slowly until squealing point; Ryan's increasingly taut relationship with Maddox is woven cunningly around the crime plot. A splendid, page-turning debut.
A rich multi-layered thriller
This is a real treat for Christmas. In the Woods is a classic murder mystery with plenty of twists and macabre detail. This is Tana French's debut and it's startlingly accomplished . . . French writes beautifully and is far from lazy when it comes to sprinkling clues and red herrings and developing the characters.
An intricate and edgy top-notch psychological thriller.
The most intricately plotted, beautifully written and psychologically acute examples of the genre that you will find. French is a delicate builder of characters' interior worlds, a precise mapper of the endlessly fascinating convolutions of both ordinary and murderous minds . . . Slick, sophisticated - and a fine one to devour as the nights draw in . . . if it stirs in you the urge to devour the French originals, too, I promise you will find something even more richly delicious there.
An empathetic psychological thriller that hammers home the fact that time cannot heal all wounds
Dublin Murders leaves an uneasy feeling behind . . . As screenwriter Sarah Phelps put it, Dublin Murders travels "into the darkness of how our imaginations are formed, and how we tell each other stories and why we tell each other stories."
