In the Woods

A truly stunning thriller and psychological mystery from one of our greatest living crime writers

By: Tana French

Narrated by: John McCormack

The inspiration for the major new BBC drama series DUBLIN MURDERS.

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 one day 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.

(P)2008 Oakhill Publishing©2007 Tana French

Critic reviews

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.

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.

Lyrical and haunting

A real show-stopper of a thriller . . . Author tightens the tension slowly until squealing point; Ryan's increasingly taut relationship with Maddox is woven cunningly around the crime plot. A splendid, page-turning debut.

A rich multi-layered thriller

This is a real treat for Christmas. In the Woods is a classic murder mystery with plenty of twists and macabre detail. This is Tana French's debut and it's startlingly accomplished . . . French writes beautifully and is far from lazy when it comes to sprinkling clues and red herrings and developing the characters.

An intricate and edgy top-notch psychological thriller.

I enjoyed this book

I really enjoyed listening to this book. The ending left me feeling a bit let down though, but I’d still listen to the book again.

The narrator was great, but the recording sounds a tiny bit muffled. Something I got used to, but almost made me stop listening in the beginning.

Incredible writing, poor ending

I truly enjoyed the delightful literary style of this author. But I became slightly tired of building out the relationship of the two main detectives and the too-cuteness of it, and then that it fell in a heap in the end. I put up with the slightly cloying character and relationship building, almost for nothing it seems. But the writing itself was poetic and beautiful and imaginative and made it worth it for me.

Excellent story

I liked story, characters. On my taste a bit too much self-pitying and victimhood on the part of each single personage. But may be it’s how are things are written now - everyone is a victim of this or that. Especially in Ireland.

Captivating story mostly badly read

I persisted with this because the story was so complex and the characters interesting but nearly gave because of the awful reader: wrong cadence and intonation peppered through. He did get better as it went on.

very suspensful story, annoying voice

Where does In the Woods rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

One of the best criminal thrillers, definitely. Keeps you on the edge of your chair and does it by elegant psychological means, not by resorting to guns and chases

Who would you have cast as narrator instead of John McCormack?

pretty much anyone. He takes some getting used to so that you even concentrate enough to understand what he says - Text-to-Voice in Kindle would be about as good. It gets better later in the book, though, so bear with him. The story is worth it!