When I read and reviewed Tana French’s standalone novel The Witch Elm in 2018, I noted that I would have enjoyed seeing more of the Dublin Murder Squad characters (Antoinette Conway, Stephen Moran, and others), but that I had enjoyed getting to know a “whole new cast of characters.” When I reviewed her next book, The Searcher, it was another standalone, with a whole new cast of characters. Now, thanks to Penguin Group Viking and NetGalley, I received a copy of The Hunter, the sequel to The Searcher (but it can be read and enjoyed as a standalone).
The Searcher was the story of a retired police detective from Chicago named Cal Hooper, who bought a fixer-upper in a remote coastal Irish village as an escape from his prior life. After a grueling divorce, he kept in touch with his daughter, but was otherwise free of entanglements, so picking up and moving across the world to a small town where he didn’t know anyone wasn’t as impossible as it sounds. Once there, he bonded with Trey Reddy, a local teenager with whom Cal bonded in a fatherly/friendly way. Both these characters appear somewhat damaged and perhaps lonely, but they bonded in a way that was touching, surprising, and ultimately rewarding.
As The Hunter opens, it seems that the majority of Trey’s waking time is now spent at Cal’s house. Together, “they mend furniture for people, and they buy old wrecked furniture and fix it up to sell…” Cal is now involved with Lena, a local woman. Lena “decided right from the beginning that she wasn’t going to make Cal’s moods her responsibility…When her husband died, five years back, she learned the skill of taking every scrap of happiness where she could find it.”
The relationship between Cal and Trey is seriously tested as Trey’s dad returns to the village and sets about trying to be a successful con man (after having not been successful at much his entire life). He arrives in the village with another man and, as described in the publisher’s blurb, “One of them is coming home. Both of them are coming to get rich. One of them is coming to die.”
One thing I love about Ms. French’s writing is the character development, and Trey is deeply affected by her relationship with Cal, in a way that allows the reader to deeply appreciate them as REAL people. “Cal told her a long time back that everyone needs a code to live by. Trey only partly understood…her code has always been a rudimentary. inchoate thing, but since her dad came back, it’s been coalescing and sharpening.”
The setting is beautifully written — definitely a character on its own. The plotting is complex and well-drawn, and there are twists and turns as the story develops. It’s challenging to discuss the book without revealing spoilers (which I never do), but it is SO good and definitely worth five stars. I actually reread The Searcher before reading The Hunter, and I recommend that — but as I said, this one can be read as a standalone. Enjoy!!