Search for a missing boy in a foreign domain

The mystery book club to which I belong just read and discussed Tana French's The Searcher (2020), the first of three novels set in a rural west Ireland hamlet and written from the point of view of Cal Hooper, a retired Chicago cop. (The other two novels are The Hunter (2024) and The Keeper (2026).)

As Cal is adjusting to life in Ardnakelty he connects with 12-year-old Tray, whose older brother has recently disappeared. The Guarda are not interested, townspeople are no help, and Tray believes that Cal, as a former detective and outsider, will find him. She recruits a very reluctant Cal to search. He does so without the support of a modern police force and in an environment that he does not understand.

French was born in Burlington, Vermont, and was taken to Florence as a baby and later Malawi. In 1990 she moved to Ireland to study drama and English literature. She loves the theater and supplemented her stage gigs with voice-over work. She did not begin writing seriously until she was in her 30s and working on an archaeological dig. The site, which was located near a stand of woods, changed her life. During the dig, French found herself asking: What if three children entered those woods but only one came out, with no memory of what happened to the others? She began shaping the idea into a story. The resulting book, In the Woods, won the 2008 Edgar Award for the best first novel.

She told The Guardian.  “It’s not coincidence that a lot of writers—a lot of actors too—are third-culture kids” (a term for children who grow up in a culture different from the one in which their parents were born or raised). “Part of it is that we’re comfortable with the instability that goes with the arts life. We’re at home with the idea that you don’t have one solid job that lasts you forever.”

On the question of genre, “I thought I was writing fiction with a mystery framework, until my editor very gently sat me down and explained the difference in sales between a debut literary fiction and a mystery.”

She’d been reading mysteries since she was a child with an Agatha Christie binge (“They’re Pringles, aren’t they? Once you pop you can’t stop”) and Patricia Highsmith—“that scalpel sharp dissection of how somebody’s psyche can disintegrate … The most emotionally powerful mysteries of all are other people. I guess that makes sense for an actor to say.” She’s an enormous fan of Donna Tartt, declaring The Secret History “one of the great mystery books of all time, and one of the great literary novels, as far as I’m concerned. And she doesn’t compromise on either one. She doesn’t seem to see any reason why she should be limited by either set of genre expectations.”

“I didn’t know if I could also write a novel, but I figured I could probably write one scene, and then another scene – and then, oh my God, I’ve got a chapter, and then at a certain point I found myself turning down acting work … I realized I was pretty serious about it.” She is, she thinks, “the only person who went into writing because it was a more stable career than what I was doing. Contracted for four years! You don’t get that in theatre.”

I reviewed French's second novel The Likeness in 2016. At the time I thought she was an extraordinary writer. She has only become better. When my book club facilitator asked how many of the 27 members would read the next two Ardnakelty novels, 23 people raised their hands. (Those who didn't generally felt The Searcher was too slow. Her booka are long.) It was a striking endorsement from a generally judgmental group.