Librarian Andrea Nelson recommends everything Tana French has ever written.
I have never been to Ireland, yet memories of it haunt me. Vivid images of mold creeping up ancient stone walls, decaying row houses with cracked walkways and gardens gone to bramble… I remember someone waiting under a street lamp at the top of the street. He waits there until the lamp flickers on and windows begin to reflect their orange glow on the wet cobblestones. From the shadows, eyes watch him search the empty street one last time. Finally, he turns and walks away—away from his brutal childhood home on the fraying edge of Dublin—away from Faithful Place, where poverty took root a century ago and still winds its tendrils through the generations.
Sometimes my memories swirl and morph to something wilder, more beautiful, more sinister… I go In The Woods, where pine needles drip with rain and moonlight flashes through wind-gripped branches.
Shadows and faceless shapes leap out and reach for me—there and gone.
Or maybe I find myself teetering on the windswept edge of a precipice, my back to the raging surf below, haunted by old bones found in the hollow trunk of The Witch Elm.
No, I have never been to Ireland, but because of the singular brilliance of critically acclaimed author Tana French, I remember it well.
All good books figuratively transport a reader to another time and place, but with Tana French, it is different. It is visceral. She paints her Shakespearean story arcs with imagery rivaling Steinbeck. Her scenes are so vivid and textured, the reader becomes part of the book.
I can still smell carefully tended rose gardens from a life I never lived with college mates in a bucolic manor village.
Tana French makes her readers question The Likeness in the mirror. What is real, and what is ruse? For this reason, and for her dazzling, poetic, prose, I read everything Tana French writes.
My most haunting Irish memory takes me back to Broken Harbor, where half framed houses stand ghosted against the night’s gloom, torn plastic construction sheets flap in the wind, and unfinished sidewalks sprout weeds, collecting trash and discarded dreams. Something feral howls in the mist, and my heart pounds in sync with the surf smashing up against an abandoned pier. Things broke, here in the thick sea fog. They splintered into shards as sharp as knives.
Tana French exploded onto the international literary scene with her first novel, In The Woods. It won the 2008 Edgar Award, the Barry Award, the Anthony Award for Best First Novel and the McCavity Award for Best First Mystery Novel. It was stunning, but for me, surpassed by several of her later books. Next came, The Likeness, my current favorite. Shortlisted for the first annual Ireland AM Crime Fiction Award in 2009, The Likeness inspired a BBC and Starz 2019 series called Dublin Murders.
French’s first six books are part of a series featuring “The Dublin Murder Squad”. Each protagonist is written in first person past from the point of view of a different member of the Squad. To fully enjoy the overlapping character trajectory, I recommend reading the Dublin Murder Squad series in order of publication: In the Woods, The Likeness, Faithful Place, Broken Harbor, The Secret Place, and finally,The Trespasser.
After The Trespasser, French stepped away from the Murder Squad to experiment with two stand-alone books. The protagonist in The Witch Elm is not a detective, but a young descendant of an old Irish family who returns to his ancestral estate to recover from injuries sustained in a break-in. The Searcher, French’s most recent book, is written from the point of view of a retired Chicago homicide detective who moves to a tiny West Ireland hamlet to rest and recover from a traumatic career. A quieter book, The Searcher embraces the traditional detective mystery genre a bit more than French’s other books, which combine searing crime drama with psychological thriller in different measures. Even within the Dublin Murder Squad series, each book is unique, from the nod to Edgar Allen Poe’s The Black Cat in Broken Harbor to the heart-wrenching and gritty Romeo & Juliet subplot that runs through Faithful Place, to the supernatural tease and the surprising protagonist in The Secret Place.
Tana French’s novels have been translated into 37 languages and have sold over eigh million copies worldwide. Her next book, The Hunter is expected in 2024.
Warning: Tana French novels contain graphic descriptions of crime scenes and may describe autopsies, though nothing is gratuitous. Every book is an Irish tale shot through with history and tragedy. You will also find plenty of colorful, creative, Irish cursing! Some books have hopeful endings; others do not. Please be aware that it is difficult to emotionally distance yourself from a Tana French novel. She’s just too good.
