“In the Woods”, no relation to the musical “Into the Woods”

In the Woods is a fascinating mystery novel by Tana French. It’s unique from most other books of its genre out there, this is an in-depth novel with a world of it’s own.

It opens with a message from the narrator, Rob, saying that he is a detective and instead of the common idea that he is obsessed with the truth, he does lie. These lies become a bit of a theme in the story as they try to sort out the fiction in this case. And it’s surprising how often this happens, and how often they fail to spot the contradictions. And since it opens with this statement, the book plays with the idea of an unreliable narrator. There’s nothing openly unreliable about Rob, and he does portray the story as it happened to him accurately, but he doesn’t know all of the facts all the time either, and that’s what makes him unreliable.

The plot itself is very intricate. It centers around a murder case, but there’s another one that Rob was involved in when he was a child that repeatedly comes up. The main question that nags at Rob is, are these two connected?

The world of this story is similarly complex, the characters are vibrant (rare for mystery books) making it more similar to an adventure novel than a classic mystery. Most detective stories that I’ve seen have the classic partners who are perfect for each other that go and catch a bad guy and like whatever. In this one, every character has a past and a personality that contributes to the story, or at least shows in their character. There aren’t any “stock” characters, each one is well-developed with their own voice.

On a similar note, Rob does have a partner, Cassie, but they aren’t a redux of the standard crime solving partners (Holmes and Watson being the model). They’re really partners and are on equal footing with each other, working as a unit to solve this case. It’s a pretty beautiful relationship.

Of course, everything falls apart at the end as a result of all these different strings tugging at the characters as a result of the plot. It’s a glorious fallout, pretty much nothing is left unscathed. I won’t reveal anything, but prepare yourselves.

This is the first in a series about the Dublin Murder Squad, I’m very excited with where French goes from here!