Tana French

Tana French is an American-Irish novelist based in Dublin. She studied English literature and drama at Trinity College Dublin, then worked as an actor before publishing her first novel, In the Woods, in 2007. Her later fiction includes the Dublin Murder Squad sequence, the standalone novel The Witch Elm, and the Cal Hooper books beginning with The Searcher.

French writes crime novels in which an investigation puts the detective’s own identity under pressure. Her recurring concerns include memory, friendship, belonging, self-deception and the lasting force of old damage. The Dublin Murder Squad books shift narrators rather than following one fixed hero: a supporting character in one novel may take control of the next. The result is intimate, character-led suspense, often filtered through a compromised first-person voice.

In the Woods won the Edgar Award for Best First Novel as well as the Anthony, Barry and Macavity awards. French has also received an Irish Book Award for Crime Fiction and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. In the Woods and The Likeness were adapted into the eight-part television drama Dublin Murders.

Start with In the Woods. Detective Rob Ryan investigates a child’s murder in the same woods where his two childhood companions disappeared, forcing him toward memories he cannot fully recover. It introduces Cassie Maddox and French’s central method: the mystery matters, but so does the damage done by pursuing it.