Book 18- In the Woods

This was an amazing mystery thriller, a first novel by Tana French, an Irish author who penned In the Woods.

Detectives Cassie Maddox and Rob Ryan are partners and best friends. Never has theirs been a romantic relationship but they are so close, the fellow cops in the Dublin Murder squad thought they were a couple as well.

They get called to a case: a dead 12 year old girl in a wood. Now they have to find her killer.

The twist of it all is, 20 years ago in the same woods, Rob and his 2 best friends were playing and his friends went missing and he went home. They were never heard or seen again. Rob had changed his identify and getting the case of a new dead child was a fluke. It also re-opens all his old wounds and some new memories about his friends.

This is an interesting book because of all the different story lines. Maddox and Ryan are trying to solve the dead girl case, trying to see if it ties into the old case of Ryan's friends. There's the dance between them, that relationship. There's a nice deep look into Ryan and his psyche. These are wonderfully developed characters, with rich narration told first person through Ryan, with vivid detail, but not so much the reader feels incessantly bogged down.

I was impressed all the way around and will be hunting for the next book by French. It's a smart read, and it takes place in Dublin so not only was my intellect challenged and stimulated, I was reading about my "happy place."