The Searcher: a very short review

I've been a great fan of Tana French for many years, but recently I had not been keeping up with her latest work. Then rather unexpectedly I re-discovered her and picked up The Searcher.

And immediately I was transported back into her world, and how glad I am to be reading her work again!

The Searcher is different in various ways from her previous work. It's much more rural, set in an utterly quiet place somewhere in west Ireland, perhaps County Mayo or County Galway, as opposed to much of her earlier work which was set in and around Dublin.

And it's different in another way: it features an expat Yankee named Cal Hooper, recently relocated to Ireland after retiring from active police work in Chicago.

And my oh my is Cal a fish out of water! A lot of the joy of the book is just following along with Cal as he learns about a different place and a different culture.

On sunny days they go back to the desk, but sunny days are getting scarcer as September runs itself down. More and more often, rain whips the house, and wind packs sodden eaves at the bases of walls and hedges. The squirrels are in hoarding frenzy. Mart announces that this means a bastard of a winter ahead, and provides dramatic accounts of years when the townland was cut off for weeks and people froze to death in their own homes, although Cal fails to be properly impressed. "I'm used to Chicago," he reminds Mart. "We don't call it cold until our eyelashes freeze."

"Different kind of cold," Mart informs him. "This one's sneaky. You wouldn't feel it coming, not till it's got you."

[ An aside: I don't think I'd ever heard the word "townland" before. ]

Now, don't get me wrong! This is a Tana French novel, so there's a crime, and there is an investigator, and there are various people in and around the event who each have their own stories, their own agendas, their own perspectives to reveal. And there's suspense, and conflict, and drama all around.

And, too, as every Tana French novel does, The Searcher has shocking plot twists, and races against time, and setbacks and simple human mistakes, and everything you've come to expect from her.

And just like the Irish country cold weather, you won't feel it coming, not till it's got you.

But if you're like me, you'll be plenty happy enough just to be riding along in her world, listening to the conversations, gazing at the landscape, and finding that you're fascinated by each page and can't wait to turn to the next page.

As long as she keeps writing books, I promise not to wait so long before reading her next ones.