In the Woods – Tana French

Adam Ryan was twelve when he and two friends disappeared in the woods in a housing development outside of Dublin. He was found a day later with several gashes, and someone else’s blood on him. He also had no memories of anything before that day. In the aftermath, his family moved away, and he was sent to boarding school in England. Eventually, he came back to Ireland, but with an English accent, and going by his middle name. He became a detective on the Murder Squad – a job he wanted for a long time.

And so we come to this story, where a girl is murdered on the outskirts of the same woods where his two friends were lost. And even though he knows he should probably be off the case, he and his partner Cassie become the principle investigators.

In reading the reviews before deciding if I wanted to read this book, a fair number of people hate the ending. And I can understand why you would, if you were expecting this to be a straight murder mystery. And while the murder is solved, that’s not really what this story is about. It’s really about how much Ryan’s loss his screwed with his head, and how that will ultimately play out in his relationships. That’s where the ending comes from. And it’s pretty terrible, from the standpoint of the story. Not at all what I was expecting, from the setup of the story, but I found it rather satisfying, in a very perverse way. But I can totally see why some would hate it.