Alec Hayes

This is the first Tana French novel I’ve read, but it won’t be the last. It’s the most eloquent writing I’ve seen in a long while - maybe ever. Other books will spend five pages describing a scene and I find myself screaming at the page “move on already!” (in my head - I’m not crazy). She probably spent a quarter of the book describing a mountain (spoiler - there’s a mountain in the book) and I hung on every word. I’m amazed that she can come up with a continual stream of exquisite prose about the same subject without repeating herself or losing my interest. It’s worth reading if only for these passages, but the dialogue may be the better part. If you’re in a hurry it may be frustrating, but this isn’t a book to read in a hurry. The roundabout dialog of the small Irish town is the point of the story as much as the plot, or at very least central to it. All that said, the plot was very satisfying in the end, even if there were points where development seemed to stall a bit. I only learned after that this is book 2 of a series, so I’ve got “The Searcher” on order. Looking forward to the back story and more detailed description on the same mountain!