Hodder Paperbacks
Hodder Paperbacks
Hodder & Stoughton
Hodder & Stoughton
A stunningly accomplished psychological mystery which will take you on a thrilling journey through a tangled web of evil and beyond - to the inexplicable.
When he was twelve years old, Adam Ryan went playing in the woods with his two best friends. He never saw them again. Their bodies were never found, and Adam himself was discovered with his back pressed against an oak tree and his shoes filled with blood. He had no memory of what had happened.
Twenty years on, Rob Ryan - the child who came back - is a detective in the Dublin police force. He's changed his name. No one knows about his past. Then a little girl's body is found at the site of the old tragedy and Rob is drawn back into the mystery. Knowing that he would be thrown off the case if his past were revealed, Rob takes a fateful decision to keep quiet but hope that he might also solve the twenty-year-old mystery of the woods.
The most intricately plotted, beautifully written and psychologically acute examples of the genre that you will find. French is a delicate builder of characters' interior worlds, a precise mapper of the endlessly fascinating convolutions of both ordinary and murderous minds . . . Slick, sophisticated - and a fine one to devour as the nights draw in . . . if it stirs in you the urge to devour the French originals, too, I promise you will find something even more richly delicious there. - Guardian
Sharply written and insidiously creepy, this is a mesmerising read that grabs hold of the reader from the very first page and doesn't let go until well past two in the morning. - The Times
Dublin Murders leaves an uneasy feeling behind . . . As screenwriter Sarah Phelps put it, Dublin Murders travels "into the darkness of how our imaginations are formed, and how we tell each other stories and why we tell each other stories." - Radio Times
An empathetic psychological thriller that hammers home the fact that time cannot heal all wounds - IndieWire
This is a wonderfully assured and beautifully written debut novel, a multilayered psychological thriller that digs beneath the surface of ordinary lives and delivers excitement and insight in large helpings. - Irish Independent
Lyrical and haunting - Scotland on Sunday
Unflinching intelligence and ingenious plotting - The New York Times
A splendid, page-turning debut. - She
Tana French grew up in Ireland, Italy, the United States and Malawi. She is the author of In the Woods (winner of the Edgar, Anthony, Macavity and Barry awards for Best First Novel), The Likeness, Faithful Place, Broken Harbour (winner of the LA Times prize for Best Mystery/Thriller) and The Secret Place. She lives in Dublin with her husband and two children. She keeps a website at www.tanafrench.com