In The Woods by Tana French

In The Woods
by Tana French
Pub. Date: May 2008
Genre: Fiction - Psychological Thriller
464pp

Synopsis from BN.com:
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Why I Picked It:
I have thumbed through this book many a time at Barnes & Noble. The other night I was exhausted from a long day with whining children who woke up entirely too early, and after they finally went down for the night, I escaped to Target to buy some formula and other basic necessities to get us through the next day. I found myself in the book aisle, and not surprisingly, I healed my weary soul with some retail book therapy, purchasing four books. This was not one of them because I, again, thumbed through it deciding instead that it felt like a good "listen". I came home and applied my monthly Audible credit to download this one.

My Review:
So I'm listening to this one on my ipod. The narration is in a classic British accent, which threw me for a while. It is, afterall, a novel set in Dublin. Plus, the narrator sounds very "snooty" and the novel has references to Kenny of South Park, X-Files, very current culture references that don't come off well with such polished pronunciations... But it only took about 10 minutes for me to get past that and decide I really like this book. It opens with a very methodical account directly from the police report of a childhood abduction and murder that occurred one day when Rob Ryan and two of his best friends went into the wood to play in the ruins. His friends didn't return, and a search party found a catatonic Rob tied to a tree, his shoes and socks soaked in blood, with no memory of what happened to him.

Twenty years later, Rob is now a homicide detective, because "I crave truth. And I lie..." Called to the scene of a crime, he finds himself in those very same woods, investigating a murder of a 12 year old girl with details chillingly similar to what happened to his friends.

There is so much police procedural detail to feed my intellectual hunger as well as believable and intensely likable and sympathetic characters in this beautifully written thriller. Although initially balking at the narrator's speech patterns, I soon found him the perfect presenter for the language, the flow of the sentence structure very comforting in his voice, all the while being completely riveted by the unfolding of the crime details, suspect investigation and the deepening of the friendship between Rob Ryan and his partner as he reveals the horror of his past.

However, it is always disappointing to me when my first suspicions turn out to be correct. I got a strange feeling about a certain character and sure enough, this character is the most evil and guilty of all. The last several chapters of the book read like a long detailed CSI episode with a full detailed and arrogant confession from all guilty parties. Almost made me think of a Scooby Doo episode with them yelling, "And I would've gotten away with it, if it weren't for you nosy kids!" Rob Ryan's behavior and attitude angered me at times, though, he did admit in his narration that he didn't paint himself in the best of light. But what can you expect from someone who is the sole survivor of a imaginably horrible abduction and murder??

This is a debut novel that leaves some loose ends with the main characters. Despite my complaints, I'm excited to learn there is a second novel, The Likeness, that picks up six months after the end of this one. Definitely going on my must read list!