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Everything You Need to Know About Tana French
By
Published: Jul 30, 2020
Category:
Fiction
A writer has a book coming out in two months. When was the last time the Times did a feature about the writer that promotes her previous books –– all of them? That’s what Janet Maslin did this week. The tone of the first paragraph suggests her enthusiasm:
Tana French has written seven novels, with an eighth due in October. There are important things they have in common. They’re superb. They’re set in Ireland. They pull you way down rabbit holes. They play devious tricks with memory. And they’ll work as haunting diversions from the stasis of now. [To pre-order “The Searcher” from Amazon, click here. For the Kindle edition, click here.]
Maslin moves on to a guided tour of French’s novel. Lucky Butler readers — Nora Levine, who owns the literary mystery/thriller corner of this site, started writing about Tara French in 2013. Take her guided tour.
In the Woods
Mysteries, crime fiction, detective stories, police procedurals, thrillers, whodunits, cozies — a broad genre that allows for endless variations on a process. A crime has occurred. There is a victim. There is an investigation. There are theories and red herrings. There are solutions. The law is (more or less) followed. And generally, the focus of the process falls into one of two categories: procedural and psychological.
Agatha Christie, as an obvious procedural example, answers the who, what, where and how of the crime. Other writers, including Jacqueline Winspear, address the psychological as well, found in the why. Who are how are fun to unravel, but consider how compelling “why?” can be.
The gifted Tana French focuses on the why, with benefits. She is a skilled storyteller, clearly evident in her first novel, “In the Woods,” and even more in the following three. Each is set in Ireland, which provides a nice change of scenery to the usual urban grit or English village. The stage is well drawn, and the dialogue is quick and sharp. The process starts, and Ms. French has the why of it in her grasp. And not just the just the why of the crime — the why of those investigating the crime.
“In the Woods” opens with a prologue recounting the kind of lazy summer days that now only exist in novels. Three young friends in Knocknaree fill those days with fizzy drinks and biscuits and a run across lawns into nearby woods to hide and seek and rule their own worlds. A cliché? Perhaps. Until a day when the three enter the woods and long hours later only one is found. [To buy the paperback of "In the Woods" from Amazon, click here. For the Kindle edition, click here.]
In 2014, Nora reviewed The Secret Place.
Stephen Moran, not unhappy working cold cases, remembers that working murders is a step up:
Cold Cases is good. Very bleeding good for a guy like me: working-class Dub, first in my family to go for a Leaving Cert instead of an apprenticeship. I was out of uniform by twenty-six, out of the General Detective Unit and into Vice by twenty-eight. Into Cold Cases the week I turned thirty, hoping there was no word put in, scared there was. I’m thirty-two now. Time to keep moving up. Cold Cases is good. Murder is better.
And then there is St. Kilda’s, a private boarding school outside Dublin, where the principal attempts to keep at bay “social media” and all the phrase implies. Instead of Wi-fi , she has installed a bulletin board, an analog intranet, the “Secret Place” — the place where high school girls with vivid imaginations can anonymously post ideas and art and gossip and dreams, seemingly without repercussion.
But on a day like any other, sixteen-year-old Holly Mackey, boarder at St. Kilda’s, daughter of Frank (we met her as a ten year old in “A Faithful Place”), walks into the police precinct, asks for Detective Moran and hands him what could be a clue in a murder about which she may have intimate knowledge. Perhaps postings on the “Secret Place” do have repercussions.
The crime: A year earlier Chris Harper, a student from a nearby boy’s school, was found dead on the grounds of St. Kilda’s. There wasn’t a girl at St. Kilda’s who didn’t know Chris or have an opinion about him. For all that, his murder remains unsolved. [To buy the paperback on Amazon, click here. For the Kindle edition, click here.]
In 2016, Nora reviewed The Trespasser.
This sixth addition to Tana French’s series, often described as “noir” whodunits, confirms again that Ms. French has carved a fine niche for herself. “The Trespasser” occupies familiar territory (Dublin neighborhoods and pubs) and involves familiar themes (an incident, a victim, a suspect or two, a theory, or two or three), but as with Ms. French’s other novels, I find that the story she wants to tell isn’t only about the crime.
And it is a compelling story. An anonymous call made to the precinct leads to the discovery of a young woman, Aislinn Murray, dead in her cottage, clearly interrupted in the midst of preparing a dinner party for two the night before. Her new-ish beau, Rory Fallon, for whom the table was set, becomes an immediate prime suspect. The Guards of the Murder Squad easily weave a time line of witnesses and behaviors and CCTV footage to implicate Rory, with some Guards having more reason to do so than others. As still relative newcomers to the Murder Squad, Detectives Conway and Moran quickly discover there isn’t much support from the Squad for alternative theories. [To buy the paperback from Amazon, click here. For the Kindle edition, click here.]
BONUS: TANA FRENCH PREVIEWS HER NEW BOOK
I got to the point where I was like, “Oh my God, I need to write someone who does not have his head stuck up his bum. [Laughs] I need to write somebody who thinks more in terms of action, who thinks more in terms of action rather than about his own thinking all the time. So that’s where it came from: Somebody who thinks through doing, who’s much more action-based.
