The Keeper – BooksPlease

Description from Amazon

On a cold night in a remote Irish village, a girl goes missing.

Sweet, loving Rachel Holohan was about to be engaged to the son of the local big shot. Instead, she’s dead in the river.

In a place like this, her death isn’t simple. It comes wrapped in generations-old grudges and power struggles, and it splits the townland in two. Retired Chicago detective Cal Hooper has friends here now and he owes them loyalty, but his fiancée Lena wants nothing to do with Ardnakelty’s tangles. As the feud becomes more vicious, their settled peace starts to crack apart. And when they uncover a scheme that casts a new light on Rachel’s death and threatens the whole village, they find themselves in the firing line.

I’ve read the first two in Tana French’s Cal Hooper series, The Searcher and The Hunter, so I was really keen to read her third, The Keeper. They are all excellent books.

This one completes the Cal Hooper trilogy continuing the story of retired Chicago police officer Cal, his fiancée Lena, teenager Trey Reddy, who is now sixteen, and the rest of the people living in Ardnakelty, a fictional, remote village in Western Ireland. Like the first two books The Keeper begins slowly, but I like the slow build up to the mystery, and I love Tana French’s beautiful descriptions of the Irish rural landscape and her characterisation. I really felt that over the course of the trilogy I have got to know the characters – they come over as real people and I felt for all of them as this story developed.

It’s focused on the death of Rachel Holohan, was it murder or suicide, as her fiancé’s father would have us believe? I’m not going to write in any more detail about the plot other than to say that from the slow start the pace picks up, the tension rises and the twists and turns all make this an impressive and convincing murder mystery. I loved it and only hope that Tana French will write more books about Cal and the others as I’d love to know what happens next.

Tana French has won several awards including the Edgar, Anthony, Macavity and Barry Awards, the Los Angeles Times Award for Best Mystery/Thriller, and the Irish Book Award for Crime Fiction.

As well as the Cal Hooper trilogy, she has written a standalone novel, The Wych Elm and six books that form The Dublin Squad series:

In the Woods (2006)
The Likeness (2008)
Faithful Place (2010)
Broken Harbour (2012)
The Secret Place (2014)
The Trespasser (2016

Many thanks to the author and Penguin for a review copy via NetGalley.

WWW Wednesday is run by Taking on a World of Words.

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

I don’t take part in this every week, but try to do so once a month.

Currently I’m reading Love Untold by Ruth Jones, the story of four generations of women. I am loving this book – Ruth Jones has brought the characters of Grace, Alys, Elin and Beca wonderfully to life!

Grace is about to turn ninety and she doesn’t want parties or presents or fuss. She just wants a quiet celebration: her daily swim in the sea and a cup of tea with granddaughter Elin and great-granddaughter Beca. More than anything, she wants to heal the family rift that’s been breaking her heart for decades.

And to do that she must find her daughter, Alys – the only person who can help to put things right. But thirty years is a long time. And many words have been left unsaid. So is it too late now to heal the pain of the past?

The last book I read was The Inheritance of loss by Kiran Desai, the winner of several prizes including the 2006 Booker Prize. It alternates between the characters in the Himalayas and their family members who are working in New York.

I found it a bit of a slog as it took me ages to read it and thought it lacked focus. There are so many characters and the narrative jumps around between them all, so that it was hard to keep track of who they all were. I’m not even sure who the main characters are. It is also a depressing book about people who are unhappy, poor, repressed, left out, living in dreadful conditions. It’s heartbreaking in places and it is both tragic and thought provoking.

What will I read next? It could be The Keeper by Tana French, which was published on 2 April and is one of my NetGalley advanced reader copies. It’s the third book in the Cal Hooper series and I’ve read the first two so I’m keen to read this one too.

On a cold night in a remote Irish village, a girl goes missing.

Sweet, loving Rachel Holohan was about to be engaged to the son of the local big shot. Instead, she’s dead in the river.

In a place like this, her death isn’t simple. It comes wrapped in generations-old grudges and power struggles, and it splits the townland in two. Retired Chicago detective Cal Hooper has friends here now and he owes them loyalty, but his fiancée Lena wants nothing to do with Ardnakelty’s tangles. As the feud becomes more vicious, their settled peace starts to crack apart. And when they uncover a scheme that casts a new light on Rachel’s death and threatens the whole village, they find themselves in the firing line. (Amazon)