By COLIN G. BALDWIN
COLUMNIST
In the quiet Irish countryside three children go missing, but only one is found. The child is discovered in the woods covered in blood with no memory of what happened to him. The blood is not his and he remains unharmed.
This mystery opens Tana French’s In the Woods, a confident debut novel that succeeds in shrouding the landscape in mystery. The found child, Rob Ryan, becomes a detective in the fictional Dublin Murder Squad and is soon consumed in a murder just outside the same woods from his childhood.
In order to provide any connections between the two cases, Ryan constantly tries to remember pertinent details that would find the murderer. However, this descent into his earlier life causes Ryan to unearth unsightly demons that he would much rather leave alone. Joining him on the case is Cassie Maddox, a strong, intelligent, and capable contrast to Ryan’s character. Maddox and Ryan are practically inseparable friends, causing coworkers to speculate on their romantic affairs. Nonetheless, they remain strictly platonic.
For the first half of the novel, the narrative maintains its standard detective format with perpetual dead ends and no solid leads on the case. Maddox is aware of Ryan’s connection to the case, but it remains a secret to the rest of the squad that Ryan is the only survivor in the missing children case.
The second part of the novel is an instant unraveling of the detectives’ lives and the reader can sense a shift in the tone of the narration by Ryan. This shift is caused by a single event that signals the turning point of the narrative.
Tana French has created a series surrounding this Dublin Murder Squad, having recently published her fifth novel, but the protagonists are never the same and French has stated that she finds it fascinating how people look different to themselves. Even the character list changes and some of the characters in Woods do not appear at all in subsequent novels. French constructs a chilling atmosphere in the novel’s setting of Knocknaree as well as the woods that seem to hold the most secrets. The characters are flawed and make significant decisions that alter the course of their life in the rest of the story, which proves to be much more interesting than reading about their content lives. In addition to this realistic element, there are several threads of the plot that are not complete and the questions surrounding them remain unanswered. French may or may not have answers to them herself, but these questions add an even more ambiguous dimension to the characters and their lives.
French produces an intriguing mystery, but an even more intriguing set of characters. She analyzes the concept of friendship and how far its boundaries reach. The character of Cassie Maddox is complex and it becomes clear why she is the protagonist of French’s second novel, The Likeness. While unsolved crimes regarding other people can result in frustrating circumstances, In the Woods argues that ignorance to our own complexities can result in even more devastating consequences.