Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“The wind blows itself out, and dawn comes to the window cold and still in a clear gold-green.”

The Searcher by Tana French

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I waited to pick up a Tana French novel even though she is highly regarded around these parts. Late last year I commented on narfna’s review that I was hesitant to pick up another author who writes an ongoing series (I’ve got the Inspector Gamache books to contend with) and that’s true enough. But I think another component was that I knew French wrote gritty, hard-boiled crime novels and I just wasn’t in the mood for those, no matter the quality of the writing (the […]

“Cal feels like he ought to stand on a street corner handing out warnings, little pieces of paper that just say: Anyone could do anything.”

The Searcher by Tana French

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TANA FRENCH TANA FRENCH TANA FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEENCH. I LOVE TANA FREEEEEENCH. Since I learned of Tana French, the Dublin murder series has been one of my number one recommended book series to anyone who asks (or ya know, stands nearby too long quietly, and thus gets accosted by my recommendation). I typically sum it up with “If you like Law and Order SVU you’ll like her and her books” but am not sure that is fair to French, more so that’s me casting a wide net […]

‘Cause I’m right here, right here, right here at home

The Searcher by Tana French

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Retired Chicago police detective Cal Hooper looks back on his life – divorced, stuck in a job that makes him increasingly uncomfortable – and decides to buy a fixer-upper in the small town of Artnakelty, Ireland. As he’s working on his house he’s approached by Trey, a twelve year old from a family widely regarded as no good by the villagers. Trey asks Cal to look into the disappearance of his older brother and Cal, reluctantly, starts to to investigate. But he’s an outsider in […]

“Cal feels like he ought to stand on a street corner handing out warnings, little pieces of paper that just say: Anyone can do anything.”

The Searcher by Tana French

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This was slower paced and less twisty-turny than her other books but I loved that about it. I liked her last book, The Witch Elm, but I loved this one. This is also a character study as well as a mystery/crime novel (that isn’t part of her Dublin Murder series), but here the protagonist is a former cop from Chicago who retired and decided to try and find peace in the Irish countryside. He bought a beaten down farmhouse and has spent a lot of […]

When Cal comes out of the house, the rooks have got hold of something.

The Searcher by Tana French

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Like The Witch-Elm, this book feels like Tana French is taking the (very successful but still present) formula of the Dublin Murder Squad books and twisting and playing with it, and the results with both this novel and the previous one, is a more subtle and literary effort. If Witch-Elm is what the Murder Squad books are like from a suspect’s point of view, this book moves out from the first-person perspective to a very close third person, and the effect of this change is […]

Lost and Found

The Searcher by Tana French

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A hallmark of Tana French’s incredible body of work is how she will always use spaces in a critical and often harrowing way to her narrative. Wooded forests, the basement of an abandoned building, a rustic home for young academics…there’s always something mystifying and foreboding about how she can take the banal and make it come alive in ways one wouldn’t expect. Here is no exception. Playing with the familiar English/British countryside mystery, French uses rural Ireland set against the mountains. And as might be […]



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