Cal Hooper, the ex-Chicago detective whom we met in
The
Searcher, is still trying to live peacefully in rural Ireland,
with little success. Trey, the teenage
girl whom Cal has taken under his wing, is now his carpentry business partner,
thus improving her standing in the community.
Then her con-man father, Johnny, reappears after a four-year absence
with a smooth talker from London and a plan to swindle the local farmers. Trey is seemingly all-in on the scam, since
she still blames the locals for the death of her older brother. However, Trey is possibly in over her head,
and Cal is at a loss as to how to protect her, since she has not confided her
plans to him. Then someone is murdered,
and law enforcement gets involved, in the person of a very competent detective
from Dublin. Reading this book is a
pleasure from beginning to end, and I think it stands on its own for those who
haven’t read its predecessor. I read
The Searcher too long ago to remember
much, other than the characters of Trey, Cal, and Cal’s girlfriend, Lena. What intrigued me the most was trying to
figure out who the murderer was, and every possibility I came up with seemed
unlikely. The murderer’s identity was
the most satisfying revelation in the novel, as that person was not even on my
radar. This book is much richer than
your everyday whodunit, and Tana French proves that she can write a mystery
novel as well as anybody.
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