In the Woods

A Novel

By: Tana French

Narrated by: Steven Crossley

Length: 20 hrs and 24 mins

Publisher's summary

Anthony Award winner

Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Novel winner

Macavity Award winner

The bestselling debut, with over a million copies sold, that launched Tana French, author of the forthcoming novel The Hunter and “the most important crime novelist to emerge in the past 10 years” (The Washington Post).

“Required reading for anyone who appreciates tough, unflinching intelligence and ingenious plotting.”—The New York Times

As dusk approaches a small Dublin suburb in the summer of 1984, mothers begin to call their children home. But on this warm evening, three children do not return from the dark and silent woods. When the police arrive, they find only one of the children gripping a tree trunk in terror, wearing blood-filled sneakers, and unable to recall a single detail of the previous hours.

Twenty years later, the found boy, Rob Ryan, is a detective on the Dublin Murder Squad and keeps his past a secret. But when a twelve-year-old girl is found murdered in the same woods, he and Detective Cassie Maddox—his partner and closest friend—find themselves investigating a case chillingly similar to the previous unsolved mystery. Now, with only snippets of long-buried memories to guide him, Ryan has the chance to uncover both the mystery of the case before him and that of his own shadowy past.

Richly atmospheric and stunning in its complexity, In the Woods is utterly convincing and surprising to the end.

©2007 Tana French (P)2007 Penguin Audio, a member of Penguin Group (USA), Inc.

Critic reviews

"[An] ambitious and extraordinary first novel...rank it high." (The Washington Post)

"Part whodunit, part psychological thriller, and wholly successful...French’s plot twists and turns will bamboozle even the most astute reader.... A well-written, expertly plotted thriller." (NPR)

"In the Woods is as creepily imaginative as it gets." (USA Today)

The narrator was great

I think the story was kind of obvious and half baked. I mean not like I could write a better story. I guess it was a really good idea that didn’t deliver. But I liked the narrator. Because I liked the idea I think I will give the author another chance.

Detection with a Difference

In the Woods is a police procedural on the surface. A girl is murdered, and the protagonist and his partner try to find the killer. Underneath, however, it's the story of that protagonist, Detective Rob Ryan, and his attempts to know and overcome his own buried memories.

On the procedural front, there's everything a reader would expect from a modern detective novel: squad-room characters, a grumpy supervisor, the working relationship of Rob Ryan and his partner, Cassie Maddox. There is also suspense, some red herrings, some authentic leads, and an investigation that gives readers a look into the political and personal worlds of the suburb where the murder takes place.

By itself, this would have been satisfying enough, but In the Woods goes a step further. Rob Ryan, like many other modern detectives, has an ongoing problem. Inspector Morse had alcohol, Barbara Havers has her weight and shyness, but Rob Ryan's in a worse spot: he knows he escaped a horrible situation that presumably killed two of his childhood friends.

But unlike other detectives' problems, this one doesn't just get in Rob's way as he tries to solve the crime: his psychological state is the major part of the story. Parts of In the Woods are therefore quite depressing. Sometimes you want to strangle the guy--why did he DO that? What the heck is wrong with him? And then you remember: after what happened to him, he can't be all there.

In the Woods doesn't offer easy answers to this major story arc. For that, I applaud the author, because trauma that deep can't be solved with a sudden, triggered breakthrough. There's a start toward normality for Rob, but it's only a start.

I wouldn't mind seeing Rob again, but I don't expect him to be more normal next time. If anything, he might be in worse shape. The narrator did a fine job, with the exception of some female voices being a bit forced. Highly recommended if you're looking for a fresh, different detective novel.

Brilliant!

After listening to 75+ Audible books over the past 2 years, I can honestly say "In the Woods" ranks right up there among my top favorites. (It is also the only book I have bothered to write a review for.) The reader is fantastic and the story is gripping. Some Audible reviewers have complained about an unsatisfying ending. I totally disagree. I thought the ending was tight and all major conflicts were resolved at the end of the story. You won't be able to stop listening to this one. I can't recommend it enough!

What's a Real Delusion?

Tanya French has chosen to show rather than tell how it seems when an understanding of the normal abruptly shifts. Perception is reality. Change the former and reality changes for the perceiver. We are the sum of our ideas. Should they shift from a manic trauma, reality will change. Like a rider in a windowless train’s car we depart into a reality that’s seemed to have moved while in fact we were the ones who travelled.

Tanya French shows rather than tells the psychological horror of someone trying to balance upon a shuddering reality which threatens to blur like the view from a careening vehicle’s window. And she does it with a mastery of detailed research that's hidden from us like the Disney folks hide their critical infrastructure in tunnels and behind soothing facades. The clues are here from the first pages, but not until well into the end do we realize how important those dark tunnels and backrooms of psychosis are.

I have a mega quibble. This book promised an Irish tale. Yes, there’s good reason to explain why the narrator Steven Crossley’s accent for the protagonist is British. Pity though that Crossley was unable or unwilling to find a trace of Ireland in the voices of the rest of the Irish cast of French’s characters. I wish that perhaps Gerard Doyle, the masterful Irish voice of Adrain McKinty’s powerful novels had told us this story. Even though I easily recommend the challenge and imagination of “Into The Wood”, Crossley is miscast as this novel’s reader.

Great mystery, well read and worth a credit.

I found this novel clever and entertaining. So much so I purchased another novel by Tana French. It's well read with a great detective story.

very good

This is an very indept writer. A very well written book. I judge books by the ability of the writer to make me feel as thought I were there. I was there.

Moments of brilliance, but needs editing

The writing style impresses at first, but that glow must have captured (and blinded) the author, as well. While a believable story line, the police characters were obscenely inaccurate and farcical.
When the author chides the reader near the interminable ending about being fooled, I thought that considering the story was so thinly disguised and the guilty so obvious, she must have believed that the integrity of the story is less important than her ability to turn a phrase. When it is so obvious who dunnit, you'd better be one hell of a writer. Or hope that your audience is made up of soap opera fans. The entire final chapter, all hour of it, would better have been left in the round file.
The narrator did a fine job while keeping his tongue in his cheek!

Uh...I Liked The Cover

Had a hard time with this mystery, although I did make it to the end. The storyline needs to move forward (and backward in this novel) with a little more steam. It wasn't a waste of my time, but I wouldn't listen to it driving at night...drink some caffeine instead.

Poetry in mystery

This book is amazing. The author not only wrote a great story, she wrote it brilliantly. It is almost poetry, and Steven Crossley reads it that way. I couldn't turn it off.

So dissapointing

I had heard wonderful things about Tina French and her series about the detectives in a major crimes squad. So I eagerly picked up this book which a friend had recommended to me. Boy, was that a mistake.

The crime is interesting enough and the solution is quite good. But it takes FOREVER to get there. The prose is dry and plodding, the characters are okay but by the end I didn't care what happened to them at all. I never felt a sense of urgency or action to this plot. The interpersonal relationships are so overdone that it felt like a seedy drama rather than a mystery and worst of all the ending just kind of happens, without interest or fanfair. I didn't care about the people or the plot or the action at all by the end.

Moreover, there is a large subplot about the author's past which is mentioned continuously and then NEVER resolved. The main plot has a killer, but there's no urgency on catching him or her, and when it finally happens its almost besides the point. It could have been so much better.