In the Woods

⚖The case for it

Rob Ryan investigates the murder of a child in the same Dublin woods where his two childhood friends vanished decades ago. French writes at the intersection of literary fiction and crime: Proustian memory, unreliable narration, psychological depth the genre rarely attempts. The controversial ending is part of its power. This debut launched the Dublin Murder Squad series and revitalized literary crime fiction.

— the canon

✕The case against

Know this going in: the 1984 disappearance, the mystery you will actually care about, never gets solved. French calls that the point. Rob Ryan narrates six hundred pages of self-sabotage so willful you can see each disaster coming a chapter early, and the present-day case resolves on a confession that arrives more or less because the book needs it to.

— the honest librarian