Who am I kidding, this is five stars. It didn’t hit me as hard as previous books of hers have, but there is no fault here. She’s just a master of character and atmosphere, and she knows how to seed a twist in such a way that it has thematic value, not just shock value.
Like its predecessor, The Searcher, this is a slow burn character study of a mystery. Also like The Searcher, this is a mystery where the investigation isn’t even the third most important thing happening. This is a mystery where our main characters are involved in the happenings in a decidedly non-legal way. It’s still a bit of a shock reading these books when I’m so used to being so deeply on the side of the law with her Dublin Murder books, whereas here many of the characters are actively obscuring the course of “justice”, and we’re meant to sympathize with many of them, to some degree. Cal is a retired Chicago cop, and he has taken that retirement seriously. It’s far important to him to keep the peace in his new community, and most importantly, to keep his surrogate daughter Trey safe.
The plot in this one kicks off (though seriously, prepare for a slow burn with intricate character dynamics here) when Trey’s absentee father comes swanning back to town, stirring up the whole place with talk of making a fortune. A fancy Englishman he met in London has stories of gold hidden in the fields and the mountain, stories he heard from his granny, who moved to London decades before. All is, of course, not on the up and up, and the presence of Johnny Reddy leaves not a stone overturned.
I was absolutely pulled in by this book and its intricate small town politics. The character of Mart, the little king of the little mountain, continues to be one of Tana French’s most fascinating, and the little family Cal has created in Ardnakelty her most endearing.
Already impatient to see what she will write next.