In the Woods
Tana French
Hodder Headline Ireland €??
Lucille Redmond
STOP all the clocks, cut off the telephone, order in enough turf for a glowing fire for a week and settle in to read a masterpiece.
In the Woods has everything: doomed lovers (two pair), child disappearance cases (x2), psychopaths (x2), crooked rezoning a gritty, witty unreliable narrator, a story that grabs you by the throat and drags you screaming through the woods.
A dead child is found on the Bronze Age altar discovered where a motorway is being driven through the sacred site of Knocknaree. She's the talented ballerina daughter of the man leading the anti-motorway fight.
The narrating cop is the survivor of another unsolved disappearance, in the glorious summer of 1984, giving him a spookily mendacious magic.
Add political dealing, the sacred honour of police partners, a family with something badly wrong, a weird archaeological crew and the horrifying pooka-haunted woods: the ingredients for something wonderful.
The story whips back and forth through brown-envelope territory, procedural matters and the loving, funny pair of cops investigating the murder with its spreading connections of dirty dealing.
Don't under any circumstances bring this book with you on holidays, unless you want to spend them reading in the hotel room.
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