I was thrilled to be able to review an advanced copy of The Searcher since I've been a fan of Tana French's previous novels. I was completely transported to Ireland again with this new book, drawn in by the slowly emerging story of the missing young man in a village that doesn't seem very concerned about his whereabouts. Underneath the plot lie questions of community and family obligations and relationships, moral codes and justice within and outside of the legal/police system, and what responsibilities we have to each other.

Took a bit to get going and set the scene, establish the cast of characters, and even show there was a crime to be investigated. But then the search seemed pretty low-key. I did like the small Irish village setting and the quirky characters, but the end is one I was able to see coming. So if you’re looking for lots of twists or thrills or menace, you’ll be disappointed.

Another good, stand-alone mystery from French. The character-based story introduces readers to a small town where there are layers of history and secrets that a new arrival cannot help getting caught up in. The characters and their stories kept me interested, even though the mystery plot wasn't particularly mysterious.

I love Tana French, and always eagerly await one of her new books. This was a slow burner, but it definitely piqued my interest and then fully grabbed my attention later in the book. I loved the atmospheric getting to know a small town, and tuning in to that feeling of being the new person in a complex web of relationships.

That said, I did think she could have done a better job in the dialogue, both internal and external, from the main character. He is supposed to be a retired cop from Chicago who was born in North Carolina, but many of his phrases seemed Irish vs. American. It's a minor point, but at times it distracted me from the story.

I highly recommend for any Tana French fans, or fans of slow burner mysteries set in small towns.

The Searcher was both an excellent mystery and the story of a man coming to terms with the changes in his life, his move to another country, and how he is dealing with the relationship with his adult daughter as well as the relationship with Trey, the young teen who needs his help.

Tana French never fails to please. Another first purchase for general fictions collections where crime and thrillers are popular.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC. Unfortunately this story wasn’t for me. Halfway through I realized that I simply wasn’t invested in the story and was having to force myself to read it. I loved the setting of a rural Irish town but the plot simply moved to slowly for me.

I received a digital ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

First, I absolutely love Tana French as a mystery writer and always look forward to her newest book.

The Searcher feels similar to her previous novels, this time with an ex-cop (why an ex-cop? is this a narrator I can trust?) who is piecing together a missing person mystery, brought to him by a wild, neglected neighbor sibling who is desperate for answers. Did the older brother abandon the family and run away to escape trouble or is he dead? (And do we really want to find out?)

I felt immersed in the The Searcher, just like I had in previous books. The protagonist is largely isolated in his life, similar to how so many of us are feeling now. Whereas other protagonists would use the resources of the police department to puzzle out the clues, Cal must rely on his intuition and powers of observation to learn whose story can be trusted and whose cannot. This makes perfect sense within the story, but I missed the hard evidence a bit.

Overall, I recommend this mystery for Tana French fans, for those mystery readers who like their stories more literary and character-driven.

I’m a huge fan of French’s Dublin Murder series. After being a bit disappointed with The Witch Elm, I had hoped for something amazing. While not amazing, I definitely enjoyed this one more.

There were quite a few scenes that I skimmed through. Just too long and unnecessary to really advance the plot. The pub scene for example was just too drawn out. Skim, skim, skim.

I really enjoyed getting to know Cal. He reminds me a bit of Galbraith’s Cormoran Strike for some reason. Was that just me? And poor Trey and her family were such tragic characters. You just hope for better for all of them.

Loved the description of the little Irish town. Honestly, can I move there too and be taken in by the locals so quickly?

Overall, just ok for me. A bit too slow and a “skimmer” in too many parts, but likable characters and decent (while not entirely original) plot.

Almost exactly two years ago, I read and reviewed Tana French’s standalone novel The Witch Elm, noting that I would have enjoyed seeing more of the Dublin Murder Squad characters (Antoinette Conway, Stephen Moran, and others), but that I had enjoyed geting to know a “whole new cast of characters.” Penguin Group Viking and NetGalley have come through again, and provided me a copy of Ms. French’s latest book, The Searcher, in exchange for my honest review.

The Searcher is the story of a retired police detective from Chicago named Cal Hooper, who has bought a fixer in a coastal Irish village as an escape from his prior life. After a grueling divorce, he has kept in touch with his daughter, but otherwise is free of entanglements, so picking up and moving to a small town where he doesn’t know anyone isn’t as impossible as it sounds.

As for his reasons for buying a piece of property in an isolated area, Cal “wanted land partly so he could blast Steve Earle loud enough to knock squirrels out of the trees, and he wanted buttfuck nowhere partly so he wouldn’t have to set alarms any more.” He enjoys the solitude, but begins to get that eerie feeling you get when you know someone is watching you. Turns out to be a local kid whose brother has gone missing. The kid wants Cal to do some investigating and find the brother, and before long, Cal starts to uncover secrets -- LOTS of secrets -- as he follows a twisting path toward solving the mysterious disappearance.

As Cal gets into the mystery, “...it comes to him, more powerfully than ever, that he has got himself into territory he doesn’t understand.” Part of his sleuthing involves getting to know some of the local characters who regularly gather at the pub, sometimes including downing LOTS of homemade booze. Cal realizes he pretty much HAS rto join in, even though he “... resigns himself to the likelihood of waking up in a ditch with his pants missing and a goat tied to his leg.”

As the story unfolds, the moral ambiguity in life is revealed. Cal has always been a straight arrow guy, following the rules. But while working on this case, Cal realizes that “Over the last few years, it’s been brought home to him that the boundaries between morals, manners and etiquette, which have always seemed crystal-clear to him, may not look the same to everyone else.” As he works to solve the puzzle of the missing brother, “...it frightens him that he can’t tell whether he’s doing the right thing or the wrong one.”

Ms. French has said that prior to writing this book, she had been “...thinking a lot about how complicated it’s become to try and navigate your way through right and wrong...and that it’s “...a good thing we’re being forced to work to figure out for ourselves what constitutes right and wrong. But it’s also constantly shifting. There’s huge social media pressure to be on whatever might happen to be the right side of the debate.”

Some people have likened this story to an old-time Western, with the lone gunslinger coming out of retirement for just one more adventure, one last hurrah as he cleans up the town. I didn’t get that vibe, but I loved it the way the mystery unfolds alongside the revelations about Cal’s character. The village is one of the most important characters, and Ms. French definitely knows how to present setting: “The mountains are invisible; beyond the fields there;s only gray, cloud blending into mist. The herd animals stand still, huddled together, with their heads down.”

I definitely hope that Cal returns in another book by Ms. French. But whether it’s him or the Dublin Murder Squad or people I’ve yet to encounter, I’ll be in line for anything she writes. Five stars.

My favorite Tana French title to date, and still something didn’t quite click for me. I thought this started off incredibly strong and then dwindled out a bit. Maybe the start of a new series??

I tore through this book in a few days, just like I have devoured all of Tana French's other books. When I read that this was her version of a western, it put the whole work in another light. I found that the culprit was slightly predictable, but that did not diminish my enjoyment of immersing myself in the world of Ardnakelty.

Tana French is back in great form. The Searcher combines rich material that addresses moral and ethical dilemmas, mystery, the awesomeness of nature, and the dynamics of Ardnakelty, a small western Irish town. All of these themes meld together to create a fabulous book.

Cal Hooper, a retired Chicago detective has chosen to move to Ardnakelty, purchasing an old and decrepit house, sight unseen. It needs a lot of work just to be livable. He is trying to get the lay of the land in his town and does not want to step on any toes. He understands that small towns have lots of interconnected dynamics and the last thing he wants is to get involved in any of them.

As he tries to settle into his house he becomes aware that someone appears to be watching him and he feels the hairs on his neck go up. Who is it and why are they there? After catching the culprit, a 12 year old named Trey, he he finds out that Trey knows he's a detective and wants Cal to help him find his brother Brendan who disappeared a few months ago leaving no note or trace of where he was going. The last thing Cal wants is to involve himself in missing persons, the work he was doing in Chicago, but Trey is a unique kind of kid and manages to convince Cal to help.

Trey comes from a poor and mostly derelict family. Cal has Trey helping him with fixing up the house and working on chores such as remodeling a desk. Trey wants the truth, the facts about what happened to Brendan. Cal promises him that but he's not sure how to proceed without stirring up the pot. As the pot gets stirred up a bit, Cal is seriously warned off the case.

The beauty of this book lies in its language, narrative and characterizations. I feel like each time a character presented themselves, I could be in their skin. I felt the lushness of the Irish countryside, the importance of small town chatter, and the beauty of watching the rooks as Cal tries to befriend them outside his home. Cal grapples with his North Star, his morality and the necessity of it belonging to him alone. He follows no one else's path. As he tries to explain to Trey, ethics is doing the right thing but morality is something beyond that, the guiding factor in being a righteous person.

This book is not one genre. It is a standalone novel that deals with human beings with all their frailties and strengths, the truths and lies that get us in trouble or keep us out of it. It is a novel of finding a home and feeling like it is possible to belong without having to run away. Cal's character is rich and wise, appreciative of the land and creatures that surround him. Trey is a survivor, a resilient kid who has managed to thrive despite facing some of the most dire life experiences.

I treasured this book, every page, and highly recommend it to all of Tana French's fans and to those who want to read an amazing novel.

Tana French is always a must-read for me and she's one of the lone authors I really don't mind paying full price for in hardback. "The Searcher" (as always) is beautifully written. French does an amazing job describing the Irish landscape and making the reader picture what the narrator is seeing. Like many, I'd love another Dublin Murder book, but honestly, as long as she keeps writing, I'll be satisfied.

I'm obviously going to be glaringly in the minority on this one, but folks, it gives me absolutely no joy to report that among the many real horrors 2020 has wrought, one of its lesser woes includes a bad Tana French book. Cal Hooper has retired from the Chicago police force after his divorce and purchased a dilapidated cottage in a small Irish village. At the start of the book he feels like he's being watched, and so he is, by one a local child whose brother is missing and who'd like help figuring out what happened to him from the former cop. The ensuing story is predictable, dull as dirt, and written in bloody present tense (my most loathed of tenses) for no good reason. Local child is the only character who isn't flat (charitably, Cal's neighbor the saucy Irish auld guy isn't so bad and has some nice dialogue) and Cal himself is a terrible protagonist. And while I know from terrible Tana French protagonists, she being after all the writer who gave us Rob Ryan and my personal favorite, Scorcher Kennedy, Cal isn't terrible because he's a misogynist like Rob or as amazingly self-centered as Scorcher, he's awful because he's just not very interesting. Cal thinks like a detective and wants to get answers like a detective but has no legal right or reason to be investigating, so his police work for the first half of the book basically amounts to registering verb tenses while having the same basic conversation with four or five other characters. It's a mildly bizarre choice for French to have made him an American who has recently moved into the area, because most of said investigation hinges on having implausibly revealing conversations with locals who don't know him from Adam. A note on American cops: Cal muses on Chicago PD's departmental sensitivity training, annoyed that it teaches his fellow cops nothing about "not shooting a guy dead on a traffic stop because he happened to be black and a second too slow in following orders." This inner monologue and a later story about being involved in and bewildered by a shooting involving a young black man - good news, the young man does not die! - seem like French's way of showcasing Cal's status as a Good Cop, given the tendency of real American police to commit racially motivated extrajudicial murders, but while I appreciate that she doesn't necessarily gloss over that fact, it makes me wonder if giving Cal the ability to comment on it is why she chose to make him an American despite how it unnecessarily overcomplicates things. I'll be blunt - had I not been obligated to provide a review, I would have given up on this book early on because life is too short, and although it picked up a bit about 2/3rds of the way through, I sadly got nothing from having slogged through and finished. Thinking on Scorcher Kennedy has made me want to go read a Dublin murder mystery. I'm not ever going to give up on Tana French as a go to author, but neither am I ever going to revisit this one.

When I read Tana French, I am in it for the Slow Burn. Sure, I want to know what is going to happen, but I also know I just need to settle in for the creeping unease that permeates her books. I enjoyed French's move to the countryside for this title, as most of her others tend to be set in urban or suburban settings. I used to be afraid of the country for precisely this reason - it's so easy to hide. Enjoyed the main characters and hope to see them again.

Tana French is a master of character-driven mystery; here we have a quirky Irish village (with all the attendant characters) and a recent American transplant. The murder at the heart of this tale is not high stakes, but perhaps that is what the author is trying to accomplish by setting this story in a sleepy town. The pacing is slower, the characters are rich, and the details keen. I missed some of the breathtaking pace of her earlier works, but appreciated this unraveling of a different kind of story.

After over two decades on the Chicago police force and a recent painful divorce, Cal Hooper moves to Ireland to start over. Here a young boy named Trey persuades him to look for his missing brother. While investigating the disappearance, Cal learns that he didn’t leave violence behind in the States.
French is the modern master of the thinking person’s crime novel and with this book she takes it a new level. The action that one associates with a crime thriller is not present until the last third of the book. Instead this book moves at a leisurely pace and Cal’s inner struggles are at the forefront of the story. The reader becomes just as invested in Cal’s story as they are in the crime itself. Even though at times this might not seem like a crime novel, it is and there are plenty of twists, turns and surprises the reader will not see coming.
French has written an atypical thriller and as with all of her previous novels it is beautifully written, surprising and engaging. In Cal she has created a character that the reader comes to feel like they really know in a way that is usually absent in a mystery novel. The fast pace one expects in this type of book may be missed by some readers, but this is a book that transcends the genre. A book that becomes its own unique thing but remains a mystery novel at it’s core. French is a brilliant writer, not afraid to push the boundaries of crime fiction and in doing so cements herself as one of the greats. The Searcher is an enthralling read that will appeal to serious readers who want a uniques reading experience. Bravo!

Cal is a retired American copy who's resettled in a small Irish village for reasons that are largely left unexamined, not the last by Cal himself. With his savings, he's been able to buy a dilapidated holding, and his efforts to rehabilitate it move as quickly as anything else in this pleasantly unurgent and drama-free book. It's the relationships Cal makes with the well-'rendered, picaresque villagers that provide the conflict as Call attempts to solve the mystery of a young man whose recent disappearance doesn't seem to concern anyone except his younger sibling, who asks Call to find him. Unaccustomed to winging it - to solve what is certainly a mystery but may not be a crime without access to the policing tools, technology and procedures left in the States along with badge, gun, ex-wife and estranged daughter - Call counts on his instincts, intuition, and understanding of human behavior to get to the bottom of his young friend's quest and make himself truly at home in his midlife reinvention.

I loved all of Tana French's Dublin Murder Squad novels and consider her the most accomplished mystery writer working today. The Searchers, however, is a standalone that's more of a literary novel with some crime mixed in. Cal Hooper, a retired Chicago cop, has bought a rundown property in the Irish countryside and spends his time making the house livable in between fishing breaks and time at the local pub. About a quarter of the way into the story, a young neighbor boy persuades Cal to look for his older brother, who left home one day and never returned. The boy is convinced his brother was abducted, although he has no reason to think that and Cal can't see any evidence of it. Cal moves very slowly into checking it out with local people and garda, none of whom sees anything alarming about a 19 year old striking out for more interesting places. Happens all the time. Eventually the story takes on a shape, but slow is the operative word.

As with all her work, French's prose is pure bliss. She can bring a character to life with a couple of sentences. Her descriptions of the Irish landscape are gorgeous -- but they take up big chunks of space and become repetitive. Readers of literary fiction may find much to love here, but those looking for another of French's gritty, deeply explored crime novels will have to wait.