![]() When a feral young boy persuades him to search for his missing brother, it appears that Hooper will follow the path French’s detectives invariably tread: in solving the case, he will remake himself. He engages with his garrulous bachelor neighbour, with the helmet-haired shopkeeper who knows everyone’s business and with the locals in the pub. Seemingly content, he works on the house with his grandfather’s tools and watches for rooks and foxes. Now he has retired to restore a dilapidated house in the remote west of Ireland countryside. Dissatisfaction with the force's ethical standards has spurred him to hand in his papers, but while the causes of his discontent are referred to, they don't animate him. ![]() The Searcher (Penguin Viking, €14.99) joins Chicago police detective Cal Hooper with his work very much behind him. Antoinette Conway, Stephen Moran, the legend that is Frank Mackey: unsettled, roiling, kinetic characters deconstructing and reinventing themselves through the challenging, perilous work they do. ![]() Reviewing the sixth book, The Trespasser, a few years ago, I suggested that two elements were central to the potency of her writing: her ability to trammel the passions, drives and dark forces of the investigation and render them in vivid, surging prose, and her gift for creating characters who we care for long after the details of the case have melted away. Tana French’s much-loved Dublin Murder Squad series is one of the outstanding achievements in contemporary crime fiction. ![]()
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