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2 out of 5
by
Monique
from
Lynnwood, WA | Jun 2, 2008
I was disappointed in this novel, which seemed so promising at the beginning. The central mystery not only remains unsolved, but a disproportionate amount of the plot is spent on what seems, in the end, a total red herring.
The narrator appears at the beginning to be a sympathetic, introspective figure, but by the end of the novel he's revealed himself to be whiny, a lousy and disloyal friend, and an inept detective. I found nothing redeeming or engaging about him, and the fact that his negative character traits were gradually revealed rather than laid out at the beginning made them even less palatable.
My main problem with this novel, however, was that I just couldn't suspend my disbelief enough to buy major elements of the plot. These cops are, frankly, idiots who overlook obvious clues and leads. The psychopath is too contrived to be believable, and her motive for murder too facile to work well as fiction. (I have yet to read an interview with a real-life psycho/killer who's this glib and silly.) The female detective's ability to spot a psychopath from a mile away rings a bit false, and the heavy-handed foreshadowing leaves readers waiting for major revelations that never really materialize.
50 people found this review helpful
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3 out of 5
by
Loren
from
The United States | Jul 13, 2008
From ISawLightningFall.blogspot.com
Three-and-a-half stars
Years ago, one of my father’s clients -- a man from the Emerald Isle named Cosgrove -- dropped by our place and, during the evening, got an insatiable hankering for the hard stuff. So my mother (who was essentially a teetotaler) found a bottle of small-batch scotch someone had given her as a gift and poured him four fingers’ worth. My father began to rib him about his prodigious thirst, but Cosgrove looked at him over his highball with deadly seriousness and said, “Lee, if you were Irish, you’d drink too.”
Detective Robert Ryan, the protagonist of Tana French’s In the Woods, has a few reasons to drink in addition to sharing Cosgrove’s nationality. He’s on the Irish police force’s murder squad, which means he’s hip-deep in grisly murders most of the time. A stabbed convenience store clerk. A homeless man beaten to a pulp. And now a pubescent girl named Katy Devlin found near the Knocknaree woods with her skull caved in. But not only is Ryan an investigator of crimes, he’s a victim of one. Twenty years ago, he and two friends disappeared into the very same forest. Only he came out, dazed and amnesiac, his shoes filled with blood. Has he found a key to his past, or will he crumble beneath the weight of hidden memories?
In the Woods is a first novel, and as such suffers from some flaws. French has a tendency to embed sentences within sentences, piling on em dashes and parentheses, colons and semicolons, until your head's spinning. But after you get a grip on the overgrown style, you have to deal with the genre, which wavers between literary and mystery, only firmly clicking into procedural mode in the book’s second half. And then there’s the problem of Ryan himself, who is more than a little unlikable. He falls into a myopic funk seemingly at every other thought of Knocknaree, ignores crucial clues, bullies witnesses, betrays his partner’s trust, downs stultifying amounts of grog and generally makes a mess of the case. “I am intensely aware, by the way,” he narrates in the closing pages, “that this story does not show me in a particularly flattering light.”
For all these niggles, though, French succeeds where more-experienced authors fail. Why? She keeps you reading. Indeed, she destroyed my sleep schedule for a week and had me pacing the hallway one Sunday afternoon, book in hand, until my wife began to fear for my mental wellbeing. In the Woods’ action is as tense as a tightrope, and for her skill in keeping me moving to the next chapter, I’ll buy French a pint if she ever shows up in my neck of the woods. Heck, let’s make it two.
33 people found this review helpful
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1 out of 5
by
Dera
from
The United States | Jul 28, 2008
This was an Edgar Award finalist, and that means a mystery, right? Well, we get a tease at the beginning--little boy survives some sort of mysterious mischief in the local woods, the two friends with him are never seen again, and when he's found his shoes are filled with blood and he's unable to speak or recall anything. Cool, huh? I would go along for a ride that works out that story (how'd the blood get IN his shoes, not just on them, etc.), even if I have to sit through another peripheral murder that takes place in the same location many years later, when said boy has become a--wait for it--police detective. Well, I got all involved in the story, even looked forward to finishing it by reading straight into the wee hours one night, and I could not believe the ending: we never find out what happened in the woods all those years ago, and we couldn't care less about the new murder that Bloody Shoes has solved now that he's all grown up. I call that a cheap trick, and I'm not even going to pick up French's second book with this character (if she writes one) to find out if she's beginning a series and wants to stretch out the story--I felt cheated, and I'm done. (Although if there is a second book, and any of you read it, you could maybe let me know what's up. . .)
34 people found this review helpful
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4 out of 5
by
Sarah
from
New York, NY | Feb 23, 2008
This gets 4 stars for being not only quite well written, but completely page turning. It's like an Irish Law and Order SVU but with some really excellent prose. Tana French is indeed a very good writer, I commend her on this debut novel and I would most definitely read her next book, when she writes it.
That being said, (SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS!!!), I guessed who was responsible for the murder pretty early on. This is pretty routine for me (no, I would never succeed at having a career as a detective or pathologist or anything like that), but with a few minor exceptions (example - 'Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn') I tend to guess these things right away because I read a lot of mysteries and I watch a lot of cop shows and the writers all tend to follow the same pattern, which is not rocket science.
I did, however, think French gave a few too many clues and I found myself yelling at Detective Ryan for being so dim witted and gullible not to catch on. Then I was angry on page 409 when Ryan basically assumes the reader is as dense as he is. Very condescending. I hate when film and books underestimate the reader/viewer. Once I had guessed the killer, I avidly read page after page to see if I was right but more importantly I read this book so eagerly because Ryan seemed like such a sketchy character that I was waiting to see if he was responsible for the disappearance of Peter and Jamie. Alas, *that* case was left unsolved. Maybe French will write a sequel, and we'll finally get an answer to that cold case.
This book would make a fantastic film. I'm sure it's already being optioned as I type this :)
16 people found this review helpful
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3 out of 5
by
karen
from
Woodside, NY | Feb 11, 2010
it must be really hard to write convincing mystery novels. you can't have your killer be too obvious or no one will bother reading past the third chapter. but you can't have them be too unexpected, without textual support, or you will be accused of cheating. the super-saturation of police procedurals in all their manifestations: literary and film and teevee, sets the genre up for failure - it just adds up to a steaming bowl of repetition and a dessicated medium. there are about five ways a murder plot can resolve itself, and the rest is wallpaper and window dressing.
and then there is this. and for the most part, it falls into the same traps - the main-plot resolution is facile and a little yawn-y, but tana french has massive balls for her treatment of the subplot. she evidently does not care about infuriating her readers. i am reading the second novel now, just out of anger - technically it is for class, but it's above and beyond the demands of the syllabus. i have never read a book out of rage at the author before. can i get a plaque??
and i refuse to say why and how and when this book began to push my wrath-buttons, but push them it did, and those of you who have read this will understand me when i howl, (and maybe one of you can tell me why i am still watching lost when it started failing me like three seasons ago - but this is the diseased impulse we are working with here - i will see this second tana french book through, even though it is not doing for me what i had hoped the first one would do for me. is this coded enough?? good.)
i asked the near-mythical tom fuller about his take on this book, and he said "i liked it until i didn't". which sounds forrest gumpy, but is spot-on the way i felt about it. it has its good points: the irish setting is well-rendered, there are some great descriptions of people, places, and things, the two detectives have a wonderful rapport... until they don't . (see how flexible that kind of assessment is??) it's not all "wee bairns" and Lebor Gabála Érenn, but syntactically it is delightfully irish, and that part of it is a pleasure to read.
dunno - this isn't the worst, i just figured that genre fiction had to play by certain rules in order to be invited into the clubhouse. tana french is a subversive lass, aye, to be sure.
go ahead, read it, and come howl with me.
26 people found this review helpful