Cannonball Read 13

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Search This Site

| Log in
  1. Follow us on Facebook
  2. Follow us on Twitter
  3. Follow us on Instagram
  4. Follow us on Goodreads
  5. RSS Feeds

  • Home
  • About
    • About CBR
    • Getting Started
    • Cannon Book Club
    • Diversions
    • Event Calendar
    • Fan Mail
    • Holiday Book Exchange
    • Book Bingo Reading Challenge
    • Participation Badges
    • AlabamaPink
  • Our Team
    • The CBR Team
    • Leaderboard
    • Recent Comments
    • CBR Interviews
    • Our Volunteers
    • Meet MsWas
  • Categories
    • Review Genres
    • Tags
  • Fight Cancer
    • How We Fight Cancer
    • How You Can Donate
    • Book Sale
    • CBR Merchandise
    • Supporters and Friends of CBR
  • FAQ
  • Contact
    • Contact Form
    • Newsletter Sign Up
    • Newsletter Archive
    • Follow Us
> FAQ Home
> Genre: Fiction > ‘Cause I’m right here, right here, right here at home

‘Cause I’m right here, right here, right here at home

The Searcher by Tana French

March 8, 2021 by Zirza 1 Comment

Retired Chicago police detective Cal Hooper looks back on his life – divorced, stuck in a job that makes him increasingly uncomfortable – and decides to buy a fixer-upper in the small town of Artnakelty, Ireland. As he’s working on his house he’s approached by Trey, a twelve year old from a family widely regarded as no good by the villagers. Trey asks Cal to look into the disappearance of his older brother and Cal, reluctantly, starts to to investigate. But he’s an outsider in a town where people never leave and where everyone knows each other. Soon, other things start to go wrong and it’s clear to Cal that the town does not want him to know what happened to the boy. 

I never know quite how to feel about Tana French’s books. She’s a gifted writer and the mysteries she writes are never predictable, the characters rarely flat. They don’t always hit home for me, though. The Secret Place, the last of hers that I read, seemed to get lost in wistful teenage melancholy a bit too often, and Broken Harbour was so depressing that I wish I hadn’t read it. She knows what she’s doing, though, and the fast-paced thriller genre could do with someone who takes a more pensive approach. 

The Searcher does the same thing. French leaves the familiar battlegrounds of Dublin for the closed ranks of a small countryside town, making Cal out to be something akin to the new Sheriff in town battling the criminal elements who’ve had their way for too long. It’s more complex than that, though. The locals lean heavily on the yokel stereotype – a bit too much, sometimes – but are shown to be cunning and knowledgeable early on. They welcome Cal as long as he does exactly what he’s expected to do, and as long as he lives up to their expectations of him. He’s welcomed into their ranks but cast out at the same time, always the newcomer, the foreigner; they’ll share drinks with him at the pub while they give him warnings about minding his own business subtly enough that even Cal has trouble picking up on what is being said, precisely. 

Yet Cal is a tenacious bastard with a finely tuned antenna, precisely honed after years of inner-city policing in Chicago. He gets dragged into the mess against his will; he has an accurate sense of the danger he’s in but seems incapable of predicting the outcome nonetheless, and his subtle detective work isn’t lost on a town that has made subtlety into an art form. 

Cal’s character occasionally comes dangerously close to the tough-but-fair grizzled detective type, but it befits the novel. The same goes for his nosy neighbour Mart, who seems to have come straight out of Sean’s Book of Irish Cliches. The villains are shady and uninteresting; they’re  mostly kept on the background. It’s Trey, tough but vulnerable, tenacious and full of determination and rage, who keeps things compelling. 

There’s a sour, ominous undercurrent throughout the book that I didn’t entirely enjoy and at times, it dragged on a little bit long for me. And this being Tana French I was fully prepared for a sad, depressing, everybody-dies-and-nothing-changes kind of ending. I’m happy that this didn’t happen. At the same time it goes against the fiber of the book. Somehow, I cannot seem to make up my mind about whether I mind or not. 

Filed Under: Fiction, Mystery, Suspense Tagged With: Ireland, Tana French, The Searcher

Zirza's CBR13 Review No:4 · Genres: Fiction, Mystery, Suspense · Tags: Ireland, Tana French, The Searcher ·
Rating:
· 1 Comment

About Zirza

CBR13 participantCBR12 participantCBR11 participantCBR  9CBR 8CBR 7CBR 6

I am an English teacher from the Low Countries. Like everyone else I aspire to one day write a Booker Prize Winner, but until then I contend my self with writing bitchy reviews. View Zirza's reviews»

Comments

  1. andtheIToldYouSos says

    March 9, 2021 at 8:19 pm

    oh Mart. Mart and his MANY hats.

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.



Recent Comments

  • Emmalita on A gorgeous exploration of family, grief and loveThis one didn't connect with me the way her others have and I'm not sure why. She writes beautifully and evocatively and she knows how...
  • dsbs42 on Likable Rich White People ProblemsThank you for that response! I'm sorry I missed it until now.
  • Rooooomie on When favorite authors disappoint you, pt 2: disappoint harderI didn’t even think to check for other reviews of his books here, that’ll be an interesting little rabbit hole for me to go into...
  • Rooooomie on When favorite authors disappoint you, pt 2: disappoint harderI didn’t realize how quickly he writes books until I just had a look at what else he’s written. You are so right that they...
  • narfna on Targeting that local public radio niche audienceThe fanfic insights and excerpts were honestly my favorite part of that book. Dade knows her shit.
See More Recent Comments »

Want to Help Out?

CBR has a great crew of volunteers, and we're always looking for more people to help out. If you have a specialty or are willing to learn, drop MsWas a line.

  • How You Can Donate
  • FAQ
  • Shop
  • Volunteers
  • Leaderboard
  • AlabamaPink
  • Contact

Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo
© 2021 Cannonball Read | Log in