After long years of being away from the A to Z Blogging Challenge, I’m going to write about thrillers of all stripes, mysteries, and crime novels for 26 days in April, based on the letters of the alphabet. All posts will be linked here.
Since I’m writing up thriller and crime novel recommendations, I’m also giving away a 50 USD Amazon Gift card, to support reading, and to help my next novel THE BLUE BAR along on its journey.
Entries involve:
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After Her Perfect Life by Hank Phillippi Ryan, I bring you
In The Woods : Book Description
As dusk approaches a small Dublin suburb in the summer of 1984, mothers begin to call their children home. But on this warm evening, three children do not return from the dark and silent woods. When the police arrive, they find only one of the children. He is gripping a tree trunk in terror, wearing blood-filled sneakers and unable to recall a single detail of the previous hours.
Twenty years later, the found boy, Rob Ryan, is a detective on the Dublin Murder Squad and keeps his past a secret. But when a 12-year-old girl is found murdered in the same woods, he and Detective Cassie Maddox (his partner and closest friend) find themselves investigating a case chillingly similar to the previous unsolved mystery. Now, with only snippets of long-buried memories to guide him, Ryan has the chance to uncover both the mystery of the case before him and that of his own shadowy past.
In The Woods: Excerpt
What I warn you to remember is that I am a detective. Our relationship with truth is fundamental but cracked, refracting confusingly like fragmented glass. It is the core of our careers, the endgame of every move we make, and we pursue it with strategies painstakingly constructed of lies and concealment and every variation on deception. The truth is the most desirable woman in the world and we are the most jealous lovers, reflexively denying anyone else the slightest glimpse of her. We betray her routinely, spending hours and days stupor-deep in lies, and then turn back to her holding out the lover’s ultimate Möbius strip: But I only did it because I love you so much.
I have a pretty knack for imagery, especially the cheap, facile kind. Don’t let me fool you into seeing us as a bunch of parfit gentil knights galloping off in doublets after Lady Truth on her white palfrey. What we do is crude, crass and nasty. A girl gives her boyfriend an alibi for the evening when we suspect him of robbing a north-side Centra and stabbing the clerk. I flirt with her at first, telling her I can see why he would want to stay home when he’s got her; she is peroxided and greasy, with the flat, stunted features of generations of malnutrition, and privately I am thinking that if I were her boyfriend I would be relieved to trade her even for a hairy cellmate named Razor. Then I tell her we’ve found marked bills from the till in his classy white tracksuit bottoms, and he’s claiming that she went out that evening and gave them to him when she got back.
I do it so convincingly, with such delicate crosshatching of discomfort and compassion at her man’s betrayal, that finally her faith in four shared years disintegrates like a sand castle and through tears and snot, while her man sits with my partner in the next interview room saying nothing except “Fuck off, I was home with Jackie,” she tells me everything from the time he left the house to the details of his sexual shortcomings. Then I pat her gently on the shoulder and give her a tissue and a cup of tea, and a statement sheet.
About the author, Tana French
Why pick up In The Woods
Read that excerpt and tell me you’re not already in love with that gorgeous voice. A relative brought the book when she came to stay at my place, and left it behind because it was too big to fit into her baggage. It is quite the tome, for sure, but absolutely worth it.
It is not heartwarming. It made me very very sad, but I still couldn’t put it down. You come to care about the main character despite his somewhat cliched, rhyme-y name, his flaws, and the mistakes he makes.
The book is not a typical investigative mystery, (even though there’s plenty of investigation and mystery). A few plot-lines are left dangling, the ending satisfies but not in the way you expect, and you keep wondering if the characters did not deserve a better fate.
If you like your stories to stun you at the level of language, if you do not mind a slower pace of investigation (which is balanced out by tensions between characters), and want to delve deep into the past of a character to more fully understand his present, this is the novel for you.
Have you read the book In The Woods? If yes, what did you think of it? What crime novels have you read lately ?
THE BLUE BAR COVER IS NOW REVEALED!
Through the month of April, to celebrate the challenge and get some support for THE BLUE BAR, I’m holding this giveaway:
Enter to WIN a 50 USD Amazon gift card for this
RAFFLECOPTER giveaway.
Entries are simple: click the RAFFLECOPTER link above, and follow the instructions. It calls for a Goodreads add, a subscription request, and a follow on Instagram.
If you enjoyed the post, click on any or all of the following to stay updated:
I normally avoid books about missing children as I find them too upsetting. But that excerpt is amazing. I might just have to brave this one.
It IS amazing, the entire book, I mean. You might just like it.
I’m a fan of Tana French and have been reading her books for a while, incl this one.
Wow.
I didn’t so much like as admire the first para or so, but the way it pans out… just wow. Can I stay away? I doubt it. It’s probably grabbed me, asking me to find it in the library when I next go….
Sounds interesting — I’m adding it to my TBR.
This is a good one, though I may be biased. I’m a Tana French fan.
Oooh. Solving the crime is usually much less important to me than the character/situation exploration so this sounds right up my very broad street. Thank you.
One of the books I am currently reading (and enjoying) is ‘the last thing he told me’ by Laura Dave.
Yes, this one I know you will actually like. I can never write like French, but I wish I could.
I just finished The Last Thing He Told Me–and enjoyed it, too! it was also the sort of book I like–in the periphery of crime, with family at the centre.
Where are you looking for these books you’re writing about? I’m deep in Sisters of Resistance and lovin’ it. I’ll check your list for my next read. Thanks for the awesome books!
I’ll have to check that one out. I am posting reads from my bookshelves. They are mostly books I’ve read in the last few years, and will be linked here: https://www.damyantiwrites.com/tag/atozchallenge/
Sounds great, and good review, Damyanti. I definitely got a feel for the book.
Hardly a review–I just go for how a book makes me feel, and what makes the most impression. You might like this one.
Your cover is awesome!!!
Another book that sounds like it would make a good and unsettling movie.
Thanks, Alex. There’s already been interest in adapting The Blue Bar to the screens. But these things are slow–so we’ll see.