User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
Cal feels like he ought to stand on a street corner handing out warnings, little pieces of paper that just say: Anyone could do anything.
Goodreads tells me I was reading this latest Tana French book for twelve days, though I'd say a good ten of those days was getting through just the first hundred pages. The Searcher was another slow-starter from French, in my opinion. Neither this book nor The Witch Elm have grabbed me as fully as her Dublin Murder Squad books always did.
That being said, once I did make it past those first hundred pages and finally settled into the rhythm of this story, I began to really enjoy it. Cal was far more interesting to me than Toby from her previous book. I also really liked the dynamic between the two main characters in The Searcher - Cal and Trey - and would liken it to a couple of other book relationships I've enjoyed, but it would be a bit of a spoiler to do so. (view spoiler)
[The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley is one that comes to mind. (hide spoiler)]French returns to what I feel she does best with this book:
grit and grime. The Searcher takes place out in rural Ireland, an isolated place of farms and local folk who've known each other's nasty business for decades. Hands get dirty, animals get killed, skinned, and eaten, not necessarily in that order. Into this wilderness comes an American ex-cop looking to settle down for a peaceful life.
Instead, Cal gets caught up in the disappearance of a local boy. Soon he is finding out that the idyllic place he imagined, the place of "no handguns, no copperheads or cottonmouths or rattlesnakes, no bobcats or bears or coyotes, no black widows, not even a mosquito" actually might be hiding all kinds of untold dangers. The comradeship and camaraderie between locals, which he so admired initially, begins to take on a threatening hue.
French hits on a couple of current issues, too, weaving them in subtly. Police shootings feature, as does a critique of social media morality. In other words, the kind where people yell over one another to compete to be seen as the most moral, or "woke", but of course French doesn't use that word.
I think, in the end, French really wanted to experiment by placing a stranger in the Irish setting she's by now so familiar with. She takes this Chicago cop who's used to having guns, pals on the force, and a back-up team at his disposal, and she strips all his resources and defenses away. Puts him in a strange land and lets him feel it out for himself. It's got the crime-solving excitement of the DMS books, but with an additional obstacle to overcome.
I'm still waiting for another Dublin Murder Squad book, but this wasn't half-bad.
Rating: really liked it
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It pains me to give a Tana French novel 3 stars, this was one of my most anticipated reads of 2020. I loved the Dublin murder mysteries and even the slow burn of The Witch Elm, but this one just didn’t do it for me. A 3 from me doesn't mean it's a bad book, just not one that I loved!
In looking back I realize that she does write male voices often but I think the choice of a retired ex-cop from Chicago perhaps just didn’t ring true to me. I live in Wisconsin but visit Chicago frequently and it’s certainly a far cry from the Irish countryside. I did like this explanation of why he retired, in part “I got weary, Cal said, bone weary.” He did. Every morning got to be like waking up with the flu, knowing he had to trek up a mountain”.
So Cal decided to move to a remote town in western Ireland, why he picked this location exactly is never explained. Perhaps he thought it was just far enough that the badness wouldn’t be found here. Of course he’s proven terribly wrong because there are bad guys and good guys everywhere. He purchases a dilapidated house and starts to work on it from the inside out. It isn’t long before his solitary life is invaded and he is pulled back into the investigative life he left behind.
We do meet some interesting characters here, one of which is Mart, Cal‘s neighbor. Surprisingly he seems to accept Cal, introduces him to lots of the neighbors at the local pub. He’s a more complicated character than we are at first lead to believe, but I pretty much had that figured out. Always watch out for the nice guys!
My favorite character was 13-year-old Trey, a child wise beyond 13 years considering what Trey has had to live with. Trey's father ran off and the mother is left with a handful of children to raise with little to no funds. Trey has no support system whatsoever. The child doesn’t attend school because Trey's mother is too exhausted to care. When brother Brendan disappears, Trey is beyond upset, is certain he would never leave, that something terrible has happened to him. After getting to know Cal in a roundabout way Trey finally asks him for his help. Although he claims to have retired he can’t seem to leave the matter alone, which gets him in a whole lot of trouble. With his father-like feelings for Trey I had to like Cal more than a little, even though I wanted to shout things at him periodically!!
Not much happened in this book until about the 80% point on my Kindle, it’s a long time to wait and I grew weary. It’s at this point that what is going on around here is uncovered, unfortunately it was quite predictable, given all the red herrings uncovered.
I was really hoping for a wow ending that would pull this up to at least a four star, unfortunately that didn’t happen. I strive for honesty in all of my reviews and it gives me no joy to report that this Tana French novel left me very disappointed. I would love to see her go back to female characters, like Antoinnette the awesome inspector from the Dublin murders series.
I will still follow this author because one disappointing novel doesn’t take away from the great novels she has previously written. It also hits at a bad time in our nation right now when reading a slow burn, depressing novel is hard to reconcile.
Go into this one blind or read a variety of reviews, there are lots of reviewers who enjoyed this one more than I did.
I received an ARC of this novel from the publisher through Edelweiss.
Rating: really liked it
Another outstanding, moving example of Tana French’s epic writing! With her remarkable skills she can create intense, realistic, dark, raw, rash portray of rural western Irish and let you have a memorable, breathtaking, journey!
This small town is the real protagonist of the story. As you start your reading, you learn to listen its own people’s struggles, sadness, demanding, hard life choices and accept the dynamics between the relationships. The town was like living, breathing, functioning organism with its own rules and patterns.
Everything starts with retired detective Cal Hooper’s moving to the small remote Irish who buys an old wreckage, dilapidated house by giving higher bid to beat a local man. Of course town’s people are reluctant to accept an outsider into their lives or welcome him with open arms.
The loner ex detective accepts his faith and focus on rebuilding his new nest, feeling someone’s scrutinizing eyes over him: Trey, a local boy watches him behind prying eyes, coming from dysfunctional family. He needs urgent help of Cal to find his missing brother.
Cal cannot find the peace in his new place and he reluctantly accepts to help the boy even though it means attracting more hostile threats of town’s people because he was about to open so many cans of worms and disturb the town’s people’s peaceful lives.
The depictions and detailed composition of rural Ireland was captivating. The pacing and creative storytelling were satisfying as always. The characters were not easy to empathize with but throughout your reading you get used to their rough parts of their characteristics and accept them as they are.
I’m giving four dark, mysterious, pastoral, impressive, meticulous depiction stars!
It is always pleasure to read French’s books.
Special thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Group/ Viking for sharing this remarkable ARC with me in exchange my honest opinions.
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Rating: really liked it
“I got weary,” Cal says. “Bone-weary.” He did. Every morning got to be like waking up with the flu, knowing he had to trek miles up a mountain.”
Unhurried. Measured and unhurried are the first words that came to my mind when I was thinking how to describe Tana French’s newest book,
The Searcher. Not slow - although I’m sure you’ll hear that - but
precisely and deliberately unhurried.
I am not a huge fan of describing books in terms of other books or other authors, but I can’t think of a better comparison here. It reminded me of Stephen King at his best (or his best according to my opinion, for all it may be worth) - not the spooky stuff but those interludes when his regular Joe characters are settling in the rhythms of a small town, feeling out the place, before the shit hits the metaphorical fan, before things go wrong -
but with enough foreshadowing that the fragile idyll is going to be over soon and bad things will come.
This is the mood and the tone here. It’s set in rural Ireland, a tiny insular rural community where more and more places are being abandoned by the youth in search of opportunities. Cal Hooper, a retired Chicago cop coming to terms with life change after his divorce, moves to this tiny place in search of calm and quiet, hoping for peace. But the peace is too fragile to last.
“One of the things that had caught his attention, when he first started looking into Ireland, was the lack of dangers: no handguns, no snakes, no bears or coyotes, no black widows, not even a mosquito. Cal feels like he’s spent most of his life dealing with feral creatures, one way or another, and he liked the thought of passing his retirement without having to take any of them into account. It seemed to him that Irish people were likely to be at ease with the world in ways they didn’t even notice. Now that rifle feels like something it would be good to have in the house, the sooner the better.”
Cal plans to restore the dilapidated old farmhouse he bought. He works at it, and takes walks, goes fishing, and enjoys the countryside, and is feeling out his new neighbors who started forming tentative friendships with him and are starting to accept him into the fold. He’s content - but he feels like this cannot last, like something is waiting to happen, and so do the readers. And yes, his new peaceful life gets a bit upturned when a local almost feral kid from a good-for-nothing family tried to enlist Cal to help find that kid’s missing older brother.
And suddenly the close-knit community is starting to feel suffocating and shoulder-to-shoulder against the stranger who is about to dig up some metaphorical skeletons from their resting places. Very quickly the reassuring things can become menacing.
“Their decades of familiarity, which seemed like a comfort at the beginning of last night, weave themselves into an impenetrable thicket; its layers obscure every action and every motivation till they’re near indecipherable to an outsider.”
This is very different from French’s much lauded
Dublin Murder Squad books. In pace - much slower. In tone - more wistful and contemplative and subdued. In the mechanics of narration - unlike all her prior books, this one abandons the intimacy of the first person narration. In the setup - as a former cop, Cal is unable to conduct the usual police-style interviews, leaving him with the need to figure out things in a more subtle approach. And in the spirit of the story - this one is not really so much about solving a crime as it is about Cal himself and things that he will and will not do, about his own moral code and how far it can be pushed.
Morals versus manners, as Cal would explain. “Cal has had enough of being discreet. He figures it’s time to kick a few bushes and see what scuttles out.”
It’s not a crime thriller, and if you go in expecting one you may end up sorely disappointed. It’s more of a literary novel by a writer who is known for psychological f*ckeries masquerading as crime novels. What happened to poor unfortunate Brendan Reddy is really not the point. What happens to the heart and soul of Cal Hooper and the community itself is the point. How the desired outcome is approached is what’s interesting - is the point getting what you should want or what you need? What do you view as justice - the punishment or the resolution? What is the goal of searching for answers?
Ultimately it’s 400+ pages of unhurried and measured character study - and the locale itself is one of the most important characters here. It’s atmospheric, it’s well-written and well-plotted, and shows that French can do very well outside the setting and style of her
Dublin Murder Squad novels. It’s captivating and nuanced, and that pub-moonshine-subtle warning scene is done so well that I read it three times in a row for sheer enjoyment of seeing a writer excel at her craft. And yes, there are a few issues tacked on too strong, too artificially likely to make this book feel more “current”, but they are easy to overlook.
Don’t go into this novel expecting more of Dublin Murder Squad feel or your usual crime novel. It’s neither of those, and in this it is interesting and special. Prepare for the unhurried walks down Irish countryside while pondering morals, not manners - and before you know, French has done her magic again, differently this time but very much worth it.
4+ stars.
Rating: really liked it
“The dark is busy around here.”
The Searcher is a character-driven mystery about a former cop whose quest to find peace in a small Irish town leads him into danger. Cal Hooper, a 48-year-old former cop from Chicago, moves to a small village in Ireland to start over. Struggling to come to terms with the demise of the marriage and end of his career, Cal throws himself into repairing his ramshackle cottage. His days are fairly prosaic until 13-year-old Trey shows up with a mystery for Cal to solve, the disappearance of Trey’s 19-year-old Brendan. To humor Trey, Cal begins to investigate Brendan’s disappearance. He uncovers a dark web in his new tiny town, which threatens to destroy all Cal has worked to build.
This is a slow burn, atmospheric read. Cal’s cottage, the woods, and the village all play significant roles in the story. Cal’s relationship with nature and his new surroundings is tied to the events of the book, which I found intriguing.
However, there is a hunting scene involving a rabbit that I could have lived without. This was my second Hurricane Zeta book, and the creepy undertones of the townspeople and the woods were enhanced by the storm and power outage. The narrative is told entirely from Cal’s point of view.
I wasn’t sure about French writing an American character, but she pulled it off (there were a few times that had me shaking my head, as Cal’s voice felt forced,) but in the end, his character worked for me. The Searcher is slow, subtle, and different from other Tana French novels (in a good way). The mystery is more of a back burner, but it becomes a driving force towards the end. Really, this is about Cal coming to terms with loss and accepting his new life.
I liked Cal, but Trey’s character was my favorite. Their friendship, while unexpected, works to hold this book together. There are a few surprises thrown in that I didn’t see coming, as I was so wrapped up in Cal’s head. The tension slowly builds, fueled by the atmosphere, leading to a tautly written, if somewhat anticlimactic conclusion.
Overall, this was a surprisingly good read (after The Witch Elm my expectations were low). I can imagine some readers will get frustrated with the pacing, especially in the beginning, but don’t give up--it’s worth the read!
Rating: really liked it
The slowest mystery that I have ever read.Cal Hooper is a retired police officer who finds himself in Ireland, fixing up a rather old house on a small spot of land. One day, he is minding his own business, living the simple life that he has always wanted, when a young boy stops over at his house. The boy wants Cal’s help with finding out what happened to his brother who has gone missing. When the police don’t care about your problems, who can you turn to? Apparently, Cal Hooper.
The Searcher is set in modern-day Ireland, a setting that I love. Aside from the setting, I also enjoyed that the women were not depicted as boy crazed. However, this book is slow, painfully slow. I started listening at 1.5X speed and ended up at 2X speed. Every time, I tried to read The Searcher, I dreaded it.
Most of the book is Cal fixing his house, descriptions of hunting (even very gruesome details), and a lot of people that don’t know anything. Rooks, the birds (not the chess pieces), were mentioned 40 times! There is so much filler in this book that the editor should cut at least 70% of the book. There just is not enough action.
This is a book where the character loves to talk about every single possibility, every possible path. Usually, I enjoy hearing the character’s thoughts, but in this case, it is overly done.
When there finally is a reveal, the author stretches it out so much. In my opinion, the author overly explains events. Most of Cal’s background information arrives in the last half of the book. This is just too late. By the time that his background is finally, finally revealed, I just did not care anymore.
In conclusion, The Searcher is a solid pass from me. There are too many books to read for a pace this slow.
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Rating: really liked it
Tana French's latest slow burn of a standalone novel is rather different fare from her usual, set in a fictional West Ireland small town, Ardnakelty, a place where the reality bears little resemblance to the idyllic rural community where nothing much happens. American Cal Hooper is a burned out and disillusioned man, retiring from Chicago PD after seeing too many of the problematic issues that readers will be familiar with, given the contemporary focus on American policing and the continuing protests in the United States. With a daughter, but divorced from his wife, he decides to shift in another direction, to try and forge a life that brings him some measure of peace and which involves him moving to Ireland, buying a run down home that will require him to spend considerable time engaged in its renovations.
Cal appreciates the natural environment, and we are given in depth details of his work doing up his home, conversing with a neighbour, Mart, holding back from jumping into too hasty social interactions with people, preferring to observe instead. However, he finds himself drawn back into utilising his investigating skills, when a 13 year old youngster from a poor background, Trey, watches him closely, aware of his background in policing. Trey wants Cal to find out what happened to his brother, Brendan, who disappeared a little while ago, and the local police have shown little interest in looking into this. A tenacious and determined Cal searches for the truth, not put off in the slightest by the obstacles that litter his path.
This is not my favourite Tana French novel, but I still enjoyed the character driven mystery, particularly the strong evolving bond between Cal and Trey as they work together. The narrative brings out the nature of small town living, including the claustrophobic feel of it, providing the backgrounds of a range of different characters. The slow moving storytelling means this will require patience from some readers to get the most from it. A complex tale of mystery, secrets, friendships, morality and ethics, relationships, of being a man, justice and the natural environment. Many thanks to Penguin UK for an ARC.
Rating: really liked it
oooh, goodreads choice awards finalist for best mystery & thriller 2020! what will happen?answer: this will lose to the perfectly fine but
The Guest List, proving that everything about 2020 was broken.
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tana french can do no wrong and we need to protect her at all costs: remove every pebble from her path, slather her with sunscreen, and for the love of god, if you find yourself in her vicinity, wear a fucking mask.
i'm sure no one will disagree with me on that, so here's where i sneak in one of those unpopular opinions. i think this is her best book yet. don't get me wrong, i adore the dublin murder squad books, and her releasing two standalone books in a row has made me impatient for their return, but i'm one of the people who loved witch elm, and this one kicks that one's ass.
set in the remote rural landscape of western ireland, this was marketed as "tana french writes a western!" and although i was skeptical at first, about halfway through, i realized it is SUCH a western. not only is the title a nod to The Searchers, but the genre conventions are all right there—the vast wilderness isolating a small population of folks in a self-governing bubble; accustomed to taking care of their own matters in their own way, and not taking kindly to outsiders. and then in rolls the lone stranger; a disruptive force challenging their way of life by taking up the cause of a wronged/powerless individual, thereby going against the collective druthers of the town and jeopardizing his own safety, all shot through with moral grey areas—it's western AF.
the story centers around cal, a recently retired, divorced policeman from chicago who left the force after becoming disenchanted with what he saw happening on the job; unable to condone questionable police behavior that jarred with his straight-shooting ‘good guys v bad guys’ worldview. anticipating a quieter, simpler life where he can reflect and get some good manly dirt under his fingernails, he moves into a fixer-upper in middle-of-nowhere ardnakelty, ireland; a place with
no handguns, no copperheads or cottonmouths or rattlesnakes, no bobcats or bears or coyotes, no black widows, not even a mosquito, only to find himself even more uncertain about right and wrong, good and bad guys.
he learns pretty early on that small towns have their own deeply ingrained codes and mores, and while there may not be any snakes (thanks, st. patrick!), there are still dangers to navigate—a litany of social infractions illuminated for him by his new neighbor mart; a chatty older man who gives cal the lay of the land, riddled with proverbial landmines.
Listening to Mart, Cal has started to get an inkling of how tangled up things get around here, and how carefully you have to watch where you put your feet. Noreen, who runs the shop in the brief double line of buildings that count as Ardnakelty village, won't order the cookies Mart likes because of a complicated saga that took place in the 1980s and involved her uncles, Mart's father and grazing rights; Mart doesn't speak to an unpronounceable farmer on the other side of the mountains because the guy bought a pup that was sired by Mart's dog when it somehow shouldn't have been. There are other stories like that...he's gathered enough to know that he could have sat on someone's stool in the pub, or cut across the wrong piece of land on one of his walks, and that that could mean something.
mart is a respected figure in the town, and once cal wins his approval, mart becomes his virgil, taking him to the pub and introducing him to the locals, whose low-key mistrust of outsiders holds an especial antipathy towards americans; one rooted in broad stereotypes and their dealings with the previous tenant of cal's place. under mart's wing, cal's natural affability and cop-honed ability to read a room and adapt to his surroundings, playing up the 'hapless american' act and taking his cues from those around him, eventually wins him the town's grudging acceptance.
it isn’t until cal meets 12-year-old trey; a local kid whose beloved older brother brendan has gone missing, and reluctantly agrees to look into the matter, that the dangers larger than dog and sheep disputes begin to appear.
on the surface, there's no great mystery to a nineteen-year-old leaving a town that people—especially young people, have been leaving to seek better opportunities for quite some time, but as cal begins to poke around and make inquiries, the reticence and deflections he encounters seem to be more than just the typical "none of your business" attitude a small town constructs against outsiders, and their scrutiny of his pursuit becomes more palpable, pointed.
All of a sudden he has that sensation he kept getting...an intense awareness of the spread of the dark countryside all around his house; a sense of being surrounded by a vast invisible web, where one wrong touch could shake things so far distant he hasn't even spotted them.
french paints cal into a tricky corner, layering the complications of his 'fish out of water' status with his being a cop with no authority. he has the skills to subtly investigate a missing persons case; years of interrogation have fine-tuned his ability to read people and mask his intentions in casual conversations, and he's certainly able to track down witnesses, follow clues, and gather evidence, but with no gun, no badge, no backup, out of his element in a whole new world of unspoken rules and subtext, he's in an extremely vulnerable position.
cal is such a great character—he has a defined personal code and moral compass, but he doesn't have a hero-complex. he's respectful of how things work in his new surroundings, careful not to impose his ideals where they're not wanted, turning a blind eye to shadiness he would not have been able to ignore if he were back home. he's driven by a need to fix things—restoring the house and furniture, solving problems, teaching trey practical skills, but he's not looking to fix the way his adopted home handles its business.
the relationships in this book are sheer perfection. cal and trey's scenes together are so damn good, and the arc of their relationship; cal's gruff mentorship, trey's naked hunger for a male role model, and the strain certain revelations bring to their relationship are all rich and worthwhile and it never falls into easy sentimentality.
my favorite teachable moment: cal’s taxonomical lesson to trey about the difference between manners, morals, and etiquette is suitable for framing.
although it takes up far less room on the page, cal’s strained relationship with his adult daughter alyssa; their awkward phone conversations where it's clear that they're both trying to have a better relationship, but there's so much unspoken between them; carrying the weight of unhealed disappointments, his failure to understand her—it’s achingly, complexly real.
cal and mart are another excellent pair—there’s a real friendship blossoming there, but there's always a glint of some dangerous edge beneath mart's surface folksiness; their mutual withholding becoming a primal instinct, like animals circling each other. such potent, gritty stuff.
this is, like The Witch Elm, another stylistic/generic departure for tana french—but at the core of it lie the same strengths: she has a bone-deep understanding of what makes people tick, she's a measured and deliberate storyteller, and she always takes the less-travelled ethical road in terms of what is right, morally, and what is right, legally, avoiding clichéd answers about what constitutes justice or closure. it may not be a procedural, but her novels have always been very character-driven, and these standalones have given her more room to explore her themes and i am all for it.
if she wants to write a romance novel next, i'll damn well read a romance novel.
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review to come, but good lord.
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tana french is writing her take on a western??
YAYYYYYYYYYY!!!
please please please gimmie!!!!
come to my blog!
Rating: really liked it
I never miss a Tana French book!
Tana delivered!
I was happy!!!
I suppose we, (die hards), could analyze this book and compare it to her others - etc.....
I just LIKED IT VERY MUCH!!!!
I thought about Rob - (from In the Woods) - Would he and Cal Hooper be friends? I think so!
I'm tired, hungry, still not feeling zippy-great - - so I'll write a review when feeling better ...
Little tidbits for now:
I liked Cal Hooper. My mouth watered for his cookies and cooking.
I liked his aloof kindness and compassion with thirteen year old Trey. I felt comfort with Cal.
I enjoyed his carpentry skills,(and his grandfather's tools).
His 'cop' skills came in handy. I trusted him.
Cal had a warm cautious and conscientious way of being.
Cal's relationships were all touching....
with Trey, Caroline, (Brendan's girlfriend), and other community folks --
Trey -- was a wonderful character --
Loved the setting, atmosphere, descriptions, the dialogue, the intensity in the pub, the mystery, I just like it all!
And...maybe this quickie --(from the top of my head -review) --is good enough!!!!
Easy 5 star enjoyment -- easy reading -easy to engage with.......
Love Tana French -- I'm a happy camper!!!
Rating: really liked it
Three stars, this one wasn’t really my kind of book too slow of a burn. The conflict (story arc, 4c’s conflict, complication, crisis conclusion) wasn’t set until page 78. The business of establishing character, setting and what the story is going to be about took too long. There was a lot of painting rooms in the house and details about rehabbing an old desk. Some other authors do the same thing, delay setting the conflict, but they also add in micro conflicts that pick up the story on their back and carry the prose along to the first dynamic scene where it lights off. Those micro conflicts were not present here. Once the conflict is set here there are only smatterings of kick-starting the main plot and it doesn’t really engage until after page 100. Yikes.
The character is well-drawn and three dimensional but for me there just wasn’t enough going on. So, this book gets an “Eh.” It’s all a matter of preference though. I like to be dropped into the “Fictive dream,” and I just couldn’t get it going here.
Rating: really liked it
Be sure to visit Bantering Books to read all my latest reviews.Review first published by Mystery and Suspense Magazine on 11/29/20.Tana French is so good.
For me, she’s a bit like Stephen King. By this, I mean – she can write on and on (and on and on) about the minutest, most mundane details of everyday life, and I lap it all up. Time and again. Every page of it, regardless of the subject matter.
She could write an entire chapter describing the tranquility of drying paint, and I would devotedly hang on her every word. She could write about
nothing, and it would leave me begging for more.
Consistently, French’s crime novels are better than most, if not always excellent, and her latest standalone,
The Searcher, is no exception. Even though it may somewhat pale in comparison to her
Dublin Murder Squad series and not be my favorite of her novels, it is still, in its own right, an immersive, compelling, and superbly-written literary mystery.
Looking for a fresh start, Cal Hooper leaves the city life behind to move to small-town Ireland. Recently divorced and newly retired from the Chicago police force, he purchases a derelict house in the Irish countryside, determined to peacefully spend his days renovating his new home.
Until a local kid, Trey Reddy, comes calling, asking for his help. Trey’s brother, Brendan, has gone missing, and Trey is desperate to find him. Not wanting to be part of an investigation, Cal first refuses to become involved. But thanks to Trey’s unorthodox powers of persuasion, Cal’s resolve slowly crumbles. Soon, Cal and Trey have trouble coming at them from all sides as they find themselves trapped in a dangerous web of secrets and lies.
The Searcher is one of those novels that sneaks up on you. It crawls under your skin, digs into your bones, and slowly consumes every inch of you.
While reading it, I was aware that I was enjoying it. And I knew that for too long, I had sorely missed the depth of French’s writing. But it’s almost as if I didn’t fully comprehend how engrossed I was in the story. It was only when I put the book down and walked away from it that I realized how constant of a presence Trey and Cal were in my mind, how relentlessly the story lingered in my thoughts.
Instinct and years of reading experience, however, indicate that my love for
The Searcher will not be shared by all. Those who enjoy mysteries with quick tempos and nonstop twists may find it to be lacking the excitement they crave. For the novel slowly burns at a low flame, with a deliberately steady tempo. The story is never hurried. It’s never rushed. And the pace never quickens, with the ending even being slow to unfold, straight through to the final page.
As with all of French’s novels,
The Searcher is also fueled foremostly by its characters, rather than the plot. Therefore, I think some readers may find the novel to be tedious. I, for one, adore character-driven stories. And for what it’s worth, I believe French writes some of the best. Her meticulous characterization skills are revered far and wide. She is so practiced at it that, for her, it’s virtually a science. It’s as if her characters leap from the page, they feel that
alive.
And she doesn’t only do this with her major characters, such as Cal and Trey. She gives her minor characters the same treatment. Cal’s neighbors and the various townspeople are just as brilliantly crafted, with uniquely individual personalities.
In this novel, too, the landscape is larger than life. The mountains, plains, and bogs of the Irish countryside are all richly described and carefully constructed on the page. French puts forth as much effort into creating the atmosphere and setting as she does her characters.
The mystery of Brendan’s disappearance, though, is where the novel slightly stutters. The who, what, where, and why of it are fairly transparent. Furthermore, it’s tough to believe that Cal, a seasoned detective from Chicago, fails to immediately see all that is before him. Especially when I can effortlessly link the puzzle pieces together from my reading chair.
In the end, the obvious solution to the
what happened and the
whodunit did not in any way dilute my pleasurable reading experience.
The Searcher is, hands down, one of the best mysteries I have read all year. If not,
the best.
And once again, I am left begging for more.
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Rating: really liked it
Cal, newly divorced and retired from the Chicago PD, moves to a remote village in Ireland looking for a quiet, peaceful life, a place that couldn’t be more different than Chicago. He’s life-weary and his relationship with his ex-wife and adult daughter is troubled.
As he renovates his dilapidated cottage he uses the isolation and physical labor as a way to heal. But there’s no privacy in a small village, and, in fact, Cal misses human interaction. He begins to meet his neighbors at the local watering hole and also befriends a local boy, Trey, who is from the wrong side of the tracks and has a secret of his own. It’s a friendship that benefits both, and it was wonderful and heartwarming to watch their friendship blossom as Trey helps with the work on his house, and Cal teaches him new skills. Cal is a true Renaissance man with many skills but those skills are tempered with compassion and goodness.
Trey has a rough home life and a beloved brother, Brendan, who has disappeared without a trace. Trey knows Cal is a retired PO and begs Cal to help locate him. As with most small towns, secrets run deep and as Cal begins to uncover them, he receives subtle threats that eventually become not-so-subtle.
Unsettling things begin to happen in the community and the good ‘ole boy camaraderie in the local pub has an undercurrent that makes Cal wary. The growing sense of tension and unease that eventually explodes is the type of subtle suspense I love in literary fiction.
I enjoy the Dublin Murder Squad series but this was a terrific, well-written, atmospheric standalone. Few authors can write this type of suspense as well as Tana French. I particularly love the type of slow burn where I’m privy to the daily routines and the private thoughts and feelings of the MC. I loved everything about this story: the setting, the colorful characters, and the growing tension.
I often look for meaning in a book’s title and in this case it’s very fitting. Does Cal find what he’s searching for? I won’t say, but I loved the ending and found it to be perfect and satisfying.
• This was a buddy read with Marialyce and we both found it a pleasure to immerse ourselves in such brilliant writing and character development.
• For our duo review please visit https://yayareadslotsofbooks.wordpres...
Rating: really liked it
“The Searcher”: A novel you feel in deep recesses of your bones, kind of like changes in the weather.
“The Searcher” is a character driven novel, first and foremost. The characters are brilliantly plotted, and written to absolute perfection. They are rich, dynamic, difficult and stubborn. Having undergone life’s trials and tribulations, they are strong, resilient and unrelenting. Some are good, kind and hard working, others not so much. In this novel, the characters are what drew me into the story immediately.
This novel is a slow burn wherein the story builds and builds. Then there are the gorgeous descriptions of the vivid landscape, the weather (yes, the weather), home remodeling, and of course, the characters, always the characters. Let’s not forget the element of suspense and the unofficial investigation that ensues involving two unforgettable characters and the relationship that evolves between them.
Cal Hooper is a former Detective with the Chicago PD who moves to Ardnakelty, a small town in West Ireland to start over. His plans from here on out are to fix up his new home, fish, hunt, rest and relax.
When thirteen year old Trey begins terrorizing his homestead, Cal realizes that Trey has an ulterior motive. Several months ago, Trey’s older brother Brendan went missing and no one in the village has done anything about it. Now that Cal has arrived in town, Trey wants Cal's help in finding out what happened.
Cal is driven, hard working, funny, kind, intuitive and smart. Trey is assertive, attentive, inquisitive, scared, sweet, poverty-stricken and wise. More than anything, Trey wants to find his brother and he knows that Cal is his best bet. At first, Cal agrees to investigate, simply because Trey won’t let up and then it becomes clear that there may in fact be something to Trey’s story.
The camaraderie that develops between the two is sheer brilliance. Cal becomes a friend, and perhaps a father figure to Trey and it is the relationship between them that makes this novel wholly special.The investigation into what happened to Trey’s brother, while a huge part of this story, took second place for me. The armchair detective in me realized at the outset what happened to Brendan and who was responsible, though it in no way took away from my enjoyment of this book. I loved the characterizations, the development of all of the characters’ relationships and the investigation that took place. I felt every ounce of this story and I savored it.
In short, I adored “The Searcher” for exactly what it was: a character driven plot which included a suspenseful storyline. Tana French is a prolific author and remains one of my favorites. I love her writing style and I am a huge fan of her characters. Someday, I would love to see her return to the Dublin Murder series and the characters of a) Rob Ryan (I need to see what has happened to his character after all of this time!) and b) Stephen Moran (who I still have a huge crush on (even though I’m twice his age)).
For those of you who love brilliantly plotted character driven suspense novels, read Tana French, I promise you will be rewarded.
Published on Goodreads on 10.25.20.
Rating: really liked it
I had seen all the reviews that warned this one was a slow start. Yes, it does take a while for the story to gear up. And if you’re looking for something fast paced, this isn’t it. But to be honest, I liked Cal Hooper so much, I was happy to just spend time with him. And it never felt like it dragged, just that it moseyed more than jogged. It’s a story meant to be savored, not gulped.
Cal has retired from his time as a Chicago detective to a fixer up in the Irish countryside. There, he meets a young boy distraught over the disappearance of his older brother. The Garda aren’t interested, so Cal starts doing his own research.
French totally captures the small town feel, the shared history, the busy bodies, the way people blow hot and cold if they don’t like what you’re doing. There are some wonderful characters, not just the two main ones. But Trey will break your heart.
In fact, this story tugged on my heartstrings in a way that most mysteries don’t even attempt.
I found I was looking for reasons to listen to just one more chapter. The narrator, Roger Clark sounded exactly like I expected Cal to sound. He did a superb job.
Rating: really liked it
this reminded me a lot of jane harpers books - the setting and the characters totally steal the show, the setting specifically. it honestly felt like i was in a small village in the irish countryside where everyone knows each other and their business. its an immersive narrative that i havent experienced from TFs storytelling before, so it was a nice surprise.
and its a good thing that those aspects were such quality because i found the plot, especially the ending, to be so anti-climatic. i dont think ive ever read a book where (view spoiler)
[the mystery turns out to be a complete accident, (hide spoiler)] and let me tell you what. what a disappointment. i understand that it
is a definite conclusion (it answers all the questions), but its the kind of conclusion that makes following an investigation for 450 pages feel not worth it? i dont know how to describe it.
overall, there are some really great things about this book, especially if you enjoy connecting to characters and their environment - its a new side to TF that i honestly really liked seeing - but i just cant get over how let down i am by the ending.
↠ 3.5 stars
