Almost exactly two years ago, I read and reviewed Tana French’s standalone novel The Witch Elm, noting that I would have enjoyed seeing more of the Dublin Murder Squad characters (Antoinette Conway, Stephen Moran, and others), but that I had enjoyed geting to know a “whole new cast of characters.” Penguin Group Viking and NetGalley have come through again, and provided me a copy of Ms. French’s latest book, The Searcher, in exchange for my honest review. Once again, it’s a standalone, with a whole new cast of characters.
The Searcher is the story of a retired police detective from Chicago named Cal Hooper, who has bought a fixer-upper in a remote coastal Irish village as an escape from his prior life. After a grueling divorce, he has kept in touch with his daughter, but otherwise is free of entanglements, so picking up and moving across the world to a small town where he doesn’t know anyone isn’t as impossible as it sounds.
As for his reasons for buying a piece of property in an isolated area, Cal “wanted land partly so he could blast Steve Earle loud enough to knock squirrels out of the trees, and he wanted buttfuck nowhere partly so he wouldn’t have to set alarms any more.” He enjoys the solitude, but begins to get that eerie feeling you get when you know someone is watching you. Turns out to be a local kid whose brother has gone missing. The kid wants Cal to do some investigating and find the brother, and before long, Cal starts to uncover secrets — LOTS of secrets — as he follows a twisting path toward solving the mysterious disappearance.
As Cal gets into the mystery, “…it comes to him, more powerfully than ever, that he has got himself into territory he doesn’t understand.” Part of his sleuthing involves getting to know some of the local characters who regularly gather at the pub, sometimes including downing LOTS of homemade booze. Cal realizes he pretty much HAS rto join in, even though he “… resigns himself to the likelihood of waking up in a ditch with his pants missing and a goat tied to his leg.”
As the story unfolds, the moral ambiguity in life is revealed. Cal has always been a straight arrow guy, following the rules. But while working on this case, Cal realizes that “Over the last few years, it’s been brought home to him that the boundaries between morals, manners and etiquette, which have always seemed crystal-clear to him, may not look the same to everyone else.” As he works to solve the puzzle of the missing brother, “...it frightens him that he can’t tell whether he’s doing the right thing or the wrong one.”
Ms. French has said that prior to writing this book, she had been “…thinking a lot about how complicated it’s become to try and navigate your way through right and wrong...and that it’s “...a good thing we’re being forced to work to figure out for ourselves what constitutes right and wrong. But it’s also constantly shifting. There’s huge social media pressure to be on whatever might happen to be the right side of the debate.”
Some people have likened this story to an old-time Western, with the lone gunslinger coming out of retirement for just one more adventure, one last hurrah as he cleans up the town. I didn’t get that vibe, but I loved it the way the mystery unfolds alongside the revelations about Cal’s character. The village is one of the most important characters, and Ms. French definitely knows how to present setting: “The mountains are invisible; beyond the fields there;s only gray, cloud blending into mist. The herd animals stand still, huddled together, with their heads down.”
I definitely hope that Cal returns in another book by Ms. French. But whether it’s him or the Dublin Murder Squad or people I’ve yet to encounter, I’ll be in line for anything she writes. Five stars.