Sometimes, when you pick up a book by an author you’ve never read before, you just get lucky.
This happened to me recently, and quite by accident. I was in a bookstore – a small outlet of a national chain, and in a small city to boot. Hopeless, or so I thought. But I had some time to kill, and a long flight ahead of me, so I wanted a mystery that was going to grab hold of me and not let go until the pilot had switched off the seat belt sign and the plane had come to a complete stop in front of the terminal building.
The clerk was super friendly and really wanted to help me. I staved her off for as long as I could, and I tried to go easy on her. But within a few minutes I was reminded why specialty mystery bookstores exist: because mystery readers have extremely particular tastes, and they read. A lot.
Yes, I’ve read all of hers. Yes, all of those too, and those.
Hmmm… read one of his once, didn’t like it, not going there again.
No, not that.
Or that.
Or that either.
After half an hour I broadened my horizons – I would consider a novel that wasn’t the author’s debut. But it had to grab me from the very first sentence.
The clerk by this point was determined. I was going to leave a happy customer, and she was going to help me. So she went into the back room and emerged with – a mystery reader.
She can help you, the clerk said.
And she was right. Within seconds, this fellow mystery reader had me figured out. She listed four or five authors, followed along with my series of short nods and shakes of the head, and she had me pegged. Then she handed me In the Woods by Tana French, and went back to the stock room.
Normally I like to do a bit of background research before I blog about a book. But I’m not going to do that here. I’m just going to say that this debut novel took my breath away. Sometimes when I read a mystery it’s like the collective votive lights of all the writers that have come before have illuminated the tunnel to a certain place. And then someone comes along and their light is just a little brighter, and you get a glimpse of where the whole genre came from, and where it will be going next.
Mystery lovers probably each have their own list of books that did this for them, and it is no doubt different from mine. My list includes A is for Alibi by Sue Grafton, The Ice House by Minette Walters, and The Devil of Nanking by Mo Hayder, among others. Books that broke the mould as I knew it at the time, and put it back together in a refreshing, but hauntingly familiar way.
The magic of In The Woods is the unrelenting first person point of view, and the depth to which the characters are explored from this viewpoint. No easy feat for a writer to accomplish. The mystery is deep, and the denouement is chillingly convincing.
My only caveat is this: at close to 600 edge-of-your-seat pages, you’d better make sure you have room in your schedule for this book. If you have any deadlines or plans for the next few days, better not crack the spine of this one just yet.
I can hardly wait to read the sequel, but for the sake of productivity, I’m holding off for a long weekend, so I can really dig in.
Absolutely true! I read this book last year, in about three days, literally with my feet up off the floor, in a near fetal position of fear, on the couch! It is a fantastic, frustrating, gripping psychological ride. Her next book is just as good, too, and just as terrifying. I can’t say how many times I wanted to grab French’s ‘characters’ and scream “what are you doing? Stop it!” She excels at making her characters flawed, and believable.
I’m waiting impatiently for a new release.
Hi Pat. So nice to see you here. I have just picked up book number two (The Likeness) – it looks so fat and satisfying. Glad to hear it is just as good. But seriously – I can’t go there just yet. I just don’t have three days to spare. Now that it is in the house though…it’s taking some self control to not just dive in…