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In the Woods
In a Dublin suburb, twelve-year-old Adam Ryan entered the woods with two friends in 1984 and emerged alone, blood in his shoes and unable to remember what happened. Twenty years later, living as Rob Ryan and concealing his past, he is a detective on Dublin’s murder squad. When another twelve-year-old is killed near the same place, Rob and his partner, Cassie Maddox, take the case. The investigation brings him dangerously close to the childhood mystery that has shaped his identity. Tana French’s debut combines a police procedural with an intimate study of trauma, memory, friendship, and self-deception. The immediate murder supplies the investigative momentum, but the novel’s deeper tension comes from Rob’s unreliable narration and deteriorating judgment. Rather than treating detection as a clean path from evidence to certainty, the book examines what happens when an investigator’s need for personal answers collides with his professional responsibilities.
