The Searcher
by Tana French
Disillusioned with his work as a Chicago police detective, and wounded by his recent divorce, Cal Hooper took early retirement and moved to a small village in Ireland. He’s bought a derelict house and is rebuilding it. The peaceful surroundings and the manual labour are healing him.
Then a kid, Trey Reddy, shows up: skittish and wary, it seems at first that Trey just wants to help Cal work on the house—until revealing that it’s Cal’s investigative skills that are the attraction. Trey’s older brother, Brendan, has been missing for months and nobody is looking for him. Cal, feeling sorry for Trey, starts sending out feelers. But without any police resources or authority, and being a newcomer to the area, he’s not making much progress.
The novel has a strong sense of place. With sometimes lyrical descriptions., Tana French takes us into the woods around Cal’s home and into the local village and surrounding area. The pacing is measured, especially in the first half of the book, with the story unfolding gradually. We get to know Cal well, including his grief for the fractured relationships with his ex-wife and his grown-up daughter back in the US. We also get to know Trey and many of Cal’s neighbours, though we also learn that surface impressions can be very misleading.
Against this backdrop, the plot unfolds. One of the themes of the book is the intersection of morality/loyalty/honour. Characters grapple with deciding what is the right & moral thing to do — are these universal or does each person have to construct their own moral code? Can people disagree about what is right and what is wrong? Twists follow twists, leading to a surprising climax—and a satisfying conclusion.
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.
She’s since published two standalone novels: The Witch Elm (2018) and now The Searcher (2020). She lives in Dublin with her husband, Anthony Breatnach, and their two daughters.
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