The Searcher by Tana French

Ever since Jeff and I returned from our cross-country road trip I have been bitten by the travel bug. I wake up in the morning and busily type different destinations into Expedia and wait to see what hotels pop up. I then go to bed at night manically trolling Travelocity and Kayak for cheap flights to every destination I can think of. So, when my friend Lilian recently said, “I just read this book and it makes me want to move to Ireland.” I quickly said, “What book?! I want to go to Ireland, too.” It was then that she introduced me to my first Tana French book. “The Searcher” is her latest work and it centers around a retired American detective named Cal Hooper. When his 25 years on the force comes to an end, as does his marriage, he moves to a remote village in Ireland. His goal is to fix up a run-down cottage that he has purchased, and hike the mountains in order to forget the life he left behind. This is a nice idea, but things in this quaint Irish village are not as sleepy as they seem. When a 13-year-old youth named Trey asks Hooper for help finding his beloved missing brother, the retired cop balks at the idea. However, Hooper soon becomes fascinated by the fact that no one else in the small town is concerned about this missing boy, least of all the police. His instincts as a cop, which he thought were dormant, quickly spring back to life again. But the more Hooper investigates the case, the more obstacles he confronts. Finishing this book certainly made me want to read more of French’s work. I was wondering how this book compared with her other novels, and I found my answer in the pages of the New York Times. Critic Janet Maslin said of The Searcher, “It’s an outlier: not her most assessable but not to be missed.” I’m certainly glad I read it and look forward to traveling with a French story in my bag again soon. To buy this book on Amazon click here.