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IN THE WOODS is the kind of book that restores your faith in genre fiction. If you're burned out on serial killers, plodding police procedurals and hackneyed PIs, read this without delay. I don't usually notice book covers, but the one here, with its brooding design of woodland, reflects perfectly what is a dark, tangled and bleak tale. Rob Ryan is a detective in the Garda in Dublin. But he has a past he can never put behind him, despite changing his name, sporting an English accent and dressing himself in sharp suits. For 20 years ago he was one of three friends who were playing in a wood near their homes. Something happened that day and Rob was the only one to return, and he has no memory of what actually happened. Then a young girl's body is found on the same site and Rob and his partner Cassie Maddox find themselves ferreting through family secrets and dealing with a particularly eclectic bunch of archaeologists who are racing against time to excavate a historical site before a motorway goes through it. So far, it's seemingly a bog-standard police procedural with a dysfunctional hero. But IN THE WOODS is so much more than that. It's a rich, literate and absolutely gripping read. I sat up until 3am to finish it, and polished off its 500 pages in one (long) day. It's incredible to think that this is a debut novel for French, who's also an actress. The book is brimming with confidence, exuberance and the kind of writing where a person, place or scene is skewered with precision. You can open this book at random and find countless examples of high-class writing, often tinged with black humour. I was rather fond of Rob's description of his college classmates as "'a herd of mouth-breathing culchie fucktards who wade around in a miasma of cliché so thick you can practically smell the bacon and cabbage and cow shite and altar candles.' Even assuming I was having a bad day, I think this shows a certain lack of respect for cultural differences." In the next paragraph, French is describing Rob's new work clothes which had been hanging ready in his wardrobe for a year before he joined the Murder squad: ". . . beautifully cut suits in materials so fine they felt alive to your fingers, shirts with the subtlest of blue or green pinstripes, rabbit-soft cashmere scarves . . ." The characters surrounding Rob are equally memorable, including Cassie, their colleague Sam O'Neill and irascible boss O'Kelly. At the heart of the book is Rob's relationship with Cassie and French captures so well that special kind of friendship from which all others are excluded. The scenes in Cassie's flat as they attempt to solve the murder make you feel like you're sitting on the sofa with them. IN THE WOODS is intense, majestic and dark. Some may find it slow, and the ending might not suit everyone. As I was reading the book I had that nagging doubt that nothing good could ever come of what we've witnessed. But this is a considerable book which shows just what writers can do with the genre when they refuse to be constrained by its perceived limits. French will have a lot to live up to with her next book, but I can't wait to see what she produces. IN THE WOODS is pure class and my book of the year by a mile.
Reviewed by Sharon Wheeler, March 2007
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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