The Keeper

by Tana French

In 2020, in The Searcher, Tana French introduced Cal Hooper, a retired Chicago policeman who has bought a tumbledown house in a remote Irish village. He’s rebuilding the house, working at his own pace and keeping to himself, when he’s approached by a skittish near-feral twelve-year-old girl named Trey Reddy. She wants him to find her missing brother.

Not to spoil that and the next book The Hunter for you — I highly recommend you read both for yourself — I’ll just say that the books are atmospheric and suspenseful, with immersive plots and memorable characters. Along the way, Trey learns woodworking from Cal and becomes his near-ward, though she remains fiercely loyal to her mother and younger siblings.

Both books have stayed vividly in my memory, so I was thrilled to learn that a third book in the trilogy came out this year.

Once again, the story is set in the tiny close-knit west-Irish village of Ardnakelty. Cal, though still an outsider, has become an accepted part of the community, in part because he’s now engaged to longtime (though somewhat reclusive) resident Lena.  

Trey is now sixteen and has a close set of friends from school. She’s close with her mother and siblings, but Cal and Lena are more than her mentors – the community considers them as her quasi-guardians.

A young local woman, Rachel Holohan, is rumoured to soon be engaged to Eugene Moynihan, son of a local bigwig. Then one evening she goes missing. The next morning she’s found dead in the stream. Rumors fly: was her death an accident? Suicide? Murder?

Cal’s instincts as a cop are still alive. And he’s known to have skills – not just as a woodworker, but also as an investigator. He refuses to act as anyone’s PI, but when it becomes clear that Lena, Trey, and Trey’s family are under threat, he steps in to find out what’s going on and stop it. In the process he uncovers a scheme that would change the entire village and its way of life.

Some of the best aspects of this book — as in the previous ones — occur in dialogue. The teenagers’ exchanges are worth the price of admission. And conversations in the community are often oblique: almost nothing is said straight out, and what is left unsaid is often the most important. Until finally directness, in both speech and action, is needed and Cal has to step forward.

Read this book not just for its plot, but for the dialogure, the interplay between characters, and the rising tension. I guarantee you won’t forget this one soon.

Tana French has been called the “First Lady of Irish Crime.”  Her books have won awards including the Edgar, Anthony, Macavity, and Barry awards, the Los Angeles Times Award for Best Mystery/Thriller, and the Irish Book Award for Crime Fiction.

Born in Vermont to an Italian mother and an American father, as a child she lived in several different countries including Ireland, Malawi and Italy. She moved to Dublin in 1990 to attend Trinity College, where she trained as an actor. She credits her professional acting experience with giving her insight into characterization and creating inner dialogues, both strongly reflected in her writing.

She grew up reading mystery and crime novels, and wrote stories as a child, but didn’t return to writing until her thirties. In a lull between acting jobs, she began writing the scenes that became her first novel. In the Woods was published in 2007, the year she turned 34. She followed that book with five more in the Dublin Murder Squad series. Her approach to a police procedural series was somewhat unusual: each book has a different primary character, but the protagonist in each book appeared in the previous novel as a secondary character.

More recently she published The Witch Elm (2018) as a standalone novel. The Searcher (2020) seemed at first to be another standalone, but proved to be the first book in a trilogy featuring Cal Hooper — continued in The Hunter (2024) and completed by The Keeper (2026).

Tana French lives in Dublin with her husband, Anthony Breatnach, and their two daughters.

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