In 1984, three children go into the woods outside a Dublin suburb and only one comes out, found clinging to a tree with his shoes full of blood and no memory of it. Twenty years later, that boy is Detective Rob Ryan, and nobody on the squad knows his past. Then a twelve-year-old girl is found dead on an archaeological dig at the same wood, and he catches the case with his partner Cassie Maddox and reveals nothing. This is Tana French’s debut, and it set the pattern for everything after: The murder gets solved, the detective does not.
In the Woods