AUTHOR: Tana French
Tana French is a good writer, and while I prefer, so far, her Dublin Murder Squad books to her standalone novels (just two, so far), her prose makes all her books compelling reads.
This is not really a mystery, though the plot revolves around a missing teenage boy in rural Ireland. Retired Chicago cop Cal Hooper bought a house he'd seen on the internet, a real fixer-upper located near sheep farms and a nearby village. He sees the move as a way to get over his divorce and to put the job behind him, but when a thirteen-year-old kid pushes him to investigate his older brother's disappearance, he reluctantly takes on the investigation. As he starts casually questioning the locals, he begins to expose secrets and dangers he didn't bargain for.
Anyone looking for an intricate mystery will be disappointed, given the investigation is more plot device to peel back the facades of Cal's new neighbors as well as leading Cal to face some truths of his own life. In fact, the investigation doesn't start until a hundred or so pages in, as Cal settles into his new life. French skillfully builds tension while evoking a sense of place. The characters seemed so real that I hated saying goodbye to them. My only quibble is that Cal, a southerner who spent decades working in Chicago, didn't seem fully American, but that's a tiny quibble about a very readable book.
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