I think a successful writer should spend as much time reading as he does writing and part of what makes me “me” is an avid interest in reading. For that reason, I want a component of my blog dedicated to reviews of books I have read. My sister has been, what The Wife has identified as, a reading machine. I believe she has finished her NINTH summer book. I’ve just recently finished my first and have a lot of catching up to do. Fortunately, I have a pile of books already on my shelf that I haven’t read, but picked up when browsing book stores because they interested me, so I won’t have to spend a lot of time finding my next quiet distraction.
The book I just finished was In the Woods by Tana French. The story is set in present day Ireland and revolves around a detective who is trying to solve the murder of a 12-year-old girl found at an archaeological dig. The detective, as a boy, grew up in the same town and went into the nearby woods with two friends. They become lost and there was a frantic search for all three. He was the only one to be found, covered in blood of one of his two friends. The story alternates between the two cases and at times suggests there might be a link between them. There wasn’t.
If you don’t want me to spoil the book for you any more, I suggest you scroll down two more paragraphs. The book was over 400-pages long, which was about 100 pages too many. The author would go into excruciating detail and drag out scenes which didn’t progress the story at all. She would also insert American pop-culture references that were out of place and dated, which created a certain dissonance when I read them. Do people in Ireland care about Justin Timberlake and Brittany Spears nowadays? I’ve never traveled to Ireland, so maybe they do, but I found the references to be intrusive.
At the end of the story, the detective never uncovers the truth about what happened to him as a boy. I suppose the author was trying to capture a truism of real life that many times people never get closure surrounding a tragedy. That’s all well and good, and I’ve been told this is a literary technique, but I have frequently been bothered by loose ends to stories. Similarly, I think the author was trying to capture the drudgery of detective work by creating different motives and having the detectives following leads to dead ends, and I found being taken along on the ride frustrating. The book finished pretty strongly when the true killer was revealed. The author developed and explored the rationale and the psychosis behind the killer’s motives.
Overall, I would give the book a C+ rating. This was Tara French’s first novel and I would have to commend her efforts. There was a sneak peak of the first chapter of her next book, The Likeness, which sounded very interesting. If a reader was looking for a new author to try, I would suggest getting The Likeness as a first taste of Tara French’s style and, enjoying that story, read In the Woods afterwards.
Since my goal is to provide as much snark as possible, I will include a brief review of a novel I read that I thought was absolutely terrible. Whatever you do, do not pick up Tyrannosaur Canyon by Douglas Preston, unless you are in a Barnes & Noble bathroom that has run out of toilet paper. The pages of paperbacks are quite soft and absorbent, and in a sense, you would be recycling. My willing suspension of disbelief finally shattered when I thought, “I can’t believe I bought this!”
The main antagonist was a hired killer who had a tattoo on his back of a Tyrannosaurus Rex. There was one unbelievable scene where he removed his shirt to show off the tattoo by striking bodybuilder poses in an effort to intimidate a captive. Towards the end of the book, he is tracking the two protagonists through a desert canyon, also without wearing his shirt. I would think he would succumb to heat exhaustion and sun stroke after a couple hours, but no. He also had a side business of being a match-maker for incarcerated felons, which had nothing to do with the story. I could go on and on about how bad this book was, but I don’t want to overshadow the review of the book I just finished. So, my recommendation is just not to buy it.
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