In the Woods
A truly stunning thriller and psychological mystery from one of our greatest living crime writers
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3.8 • 237 Ratings
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- $2.99
Publisher Description
THE ONCE-IN-A-LIFETIME THRILLER FROM THE MILLION-COPY, SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR
'To say Tana French is one of the great thriller writers is really too limiting. Rather she's simply this: a truly great writer' GILLIAN FLYNN
'[Crime fiction's] biggest contemporary star' GUARDIAN
'One of the finest writers of contemporary crime fiction' DAILY MAIL
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Three children went into the woods to play . . .
One came out.
When he was twelve years old, Adam Ryan went playing in the woods with his two best friends. He never saw them again.
Their bodies were never found, and Adam himself was discovered with his back pressed against an oak tree, his shoes filled with blood. He had no memory of what had happened.
Twenty years on, Rob Ryan - the child who came back - is a detective in the Dublin police force. He's changed his name. No one knows about his past.
But when a little girl's body is found at the site of the old tragedy, Rob is drawn back into his own haunted memories.
Knowing that he would be thrown off the case if his past were revealed, Rob takes a fateful decision to keep quiet, as he begins a desperate quest to solve the twenty-year-old mystery of the woods.
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Adapted, along with The Likeness, into the iconic BBC series Dublin Murders
EDGAR AWARD FOR BEST FIRST NOVEL
ANTHONY AWARD FOR BEST FIRST NOVEL
BARRY AWARD FOR BEST FIRST NOVEL
MACAVITY AWARD FOR BEST FIRST NOVEL
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Praise for the talismanic Tana French and her novels
'I can do you no greater favour in life than recommending that you read her books' GUARDIAN
'The most interesting, the most important crime novelist to emerge in the last ten years' WASHINGTON POST
'The most breathtakingly brilliant and close-to-perfect thriller I've read for a long time' SOPHIE HANNAH
'I'm a big fan of Tana French' IAN RANKIN
'This is a tour de force of suspense and storytelling. Comes closer to perfection than anything I've read in the last decade' SARAH HILARY
'French offers a masterclass in unreliability' SUNDAY TIMES
'An audacious departure for this immensely talented author . . . not to be missed' NEW YORK TIMES
'A wonderfully assured and beautifully written debut novel' IRISH INDEPENDENT
'I didn't want it to end' HARRIET TYCE
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Tana French’s Edgar-winning thriller kicks off her ever-popular Dublin Murder Squad series. Outside a sleepy Irish village, 12-year-old Katy Devlin is found murdered at an archeological dig—the same location where, 20 years before, two children disappeared and a third was assaulted. That third child, Rob Ryan, is now the lead detective on Katy’s case, which pulls him unwillingly into his own traumatic past. French introduces us to several fascinating characters, including Ryan’s partner Cassie Maddox, who must prove her worth to her grizzled colleagues. In the Woods builds toward an emotional climax we definitely didn’t see coming.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Irish author French expertly walks the line between police procedural and psychological thriller in her debut. When Katy Devlin, a 12-year-old girl from Knocknaree, a Dublin suburb, is found murdered at a local archeological dig, Det. Rob Ryan and his partner, Cassie Maddox, must probe deep into the victim's troubled family history. There are chilling similarities between the Devlin murder and the disappearance 20 years before of two children from the same neighborhood who were Ryan's best friends. Only Maddox knows Ryan was involved in the 1984 case. The plot climaxes with a taut interrogation by Maddox of a potential suspect, and the reader is floored by the eventual identity and motives of the killer. A distracting political subplot involves a pending motorway in Knocknaree, but Ryan and Maddox are empathetic and flawed heroes, whose partnership and friendship elevate the narrative beyond a gory tale of murdered children and repressed childhood trauma.
Customer Reviews
In The Woods
Superb mystery. I read as fast as I could trying to keep pace.
in The Woods
Was an interesting read at the beginning....good character development... but annoying ending which leaves the reader uninformed of “what happened to the other 2 children”.... will not read this author again.
Tried it didnt like it.
WAY WAY TOO WORDY AND DESCRIPTIVE. You lose the story in the words.