The Searcher Tana French (2020) I’ve known for many years that Tana French writes highly regarded mysteries set in Ireland, but, from online summaries, I’ve figured that her books were too violent for my taste. I finally decided to try The Searcher; I resolved that I’d send it back to the library after a few chapters if it got too intense. Well, I ended up reading all 451 pages in one day. Cal Hooper is an American who’s moved to the west of Ireland, seeking a peaceful place for an early retirement after 25 years with the Chicago police. He’s also trying to put behind him the recent painful dissolution of his marriage. As he scrapes mildewed wallpaper from the walls of the run-down Irish cottage that he bought, he meets a local kid, Trey Reddy, whose older brother has gone missing. Cal really doesn’t want to get involved, but he’s drawn into a tangled web of local crime. The novelist weaves a tantalizing tale but also has a way with descriptions of the Irish landscape, Irish weather, and Irish pub life that rings true and pulls the reader right in. (I lived in Ireland for a year, way back when, so there’s also the nostalgia for me.) Tana French checks all the boxes for mystery lovers.
The Hunter Tana French (2024) If you liked The Searcher, be sure to follow up with The Hunter. This mystery novel continues the story of Cal Hooper and Trey Reddy, drawing on the backstory of the previous novel. It’s set once again in the west of Ireland, two years later. Cal has developed a furniture repair business and now has an Irish girlfriend, Lena Dunne, who comes to play an important role in the plot. Trey’s loser father, Johnny, who left his family years before, has returned, bringing an English buddy and a wild scheme about mining for gold in the nearby mountains. Much to Cal’s consternation, Trey gets caught up in the scam, as the characters follow paths and clues up and down the mountainside. The dialog in this novel is somewhat bawdier than that in The Searcher, but men at a pub in an Irish village likely do talk like that as they taunt each other and circulate the latest gossip. (I had to look up a couple of dialect words—“yoke,” for example, means “thing-a-ma-jig.”) Since this novel clocks in at 467 pages, set aside time to read it within a short time span, so that you can keep all the threads straight!