Sunday, July 13, 2008

Book #49: In The Woods


Title: In the Woods
Author: Tana French

When Murder Detective Rob Ryan was twelve, he and his two best friends disappeared into the woods outside of Dublin, and his friends were never seen again. Now he must solve the murder of another twelve-year-old girl who goes missing in the same woods.

When I start reading a novel, I usually assume that I'm going to like the narrator. With In the Woods, I started out liking Rob Ryan quite a bit. He was good-looking, smart, funny, and except for not remembering much of what happened in the first twelve years of his life, fairly normal. He and his partner, Cassie Maddox, have an unbelievably close platonic relationship. The he gets this case and starts to crack up. Over the course of the novel, I went from really liking him, to really disliking him. At the end of the book, he dates a woman who encourages him to date younger women because they might not be able to realize how screwed up he is. It was interesting to watch Ryan's life go from pretty good to pretty miserable. The book is very well-written and interesting and the characterization of Rob, Cassie and the supporting characters is excellent.

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