Better than "Faithful Place", not as good as "The Likeness"; "In the Woods" has the same problem as French's other novels: she can't end a story without multiple codas and epilogues which inevitably become enervating. This is an okay psychological thriller which is marred by it's dull-witted, self-important, first person narrator.

What starts of as a crime drama turns into an intense psychological thriller. The reader accompanies the main character on a journey into madness. Warning, try not to read this book at night.

Very good! Its been in my "to read" pile of books I own for awhile and kept getting bumped back by library copies of books I had on hold or books for review. Glad I got around to it. Would definitely recommend!

This mystery concentrates on events near a small Dublin suburb. In the summer of 1984, three 12-year-old friends are playing in and around the woods near their houses, and don't come home for dinner. Much searching is done, and one child is finally found, terrified, with his nails dug into a tree and his shoes full of blood. Neither other child is ever found. Go forward twenty years, and the child has become a detective on the Murder Squad. He is on the case of a 12-year-old girl whose body was found on the site where the woods once were. As he works on the case, memories of his own past intrude. He searches for links between the two, and hides his connection to the old case. But secrets cannot always be kept. The main character seems scarred forever by the one event in his past.

An Incredible 600 pages of a dark psychological mystery. Best 1st novel, that I have read, since Minette Walter's "The Ice House"

Great book, fresh and unique voice, kept me reading into the middle of the night, night after night. But the end.... Soprano's-esque in the questions left dangling.... there's a followup book... hoping.....

This is an amazing book! I would recommend reading it as a psychological thriller rather than as a mystery.

Yes, this is a book about two detectives trying to solve the horrible murder of a child, but it is so much more. It's also about friendship, boundaries & how easy it is to hurt the ones most important in our lives. French pulls you into a story until you find yourself setting everything else aside so you don't have to put it down. This is her first & I reccommend all three that I've read so far. Great storyteller with terrific insight into human nature.

Really nice police procedural. Won an Edgar award in 2008 as best first novel.

When Rob Ryan is handed a child murder case, he and his partner/best friend Cassie, are stunned to find out that the crime has occured in his old home town, Knocknaree. It was in the very same spot that twenty years before Rob was the survivor of a child abduction of two of his friends. Now the memories are gone but this case may make him the target of new nightmares while he and Cassie chase the elusive murderer. What Rob finds out about himself and his partnership will bring him to his knees. Although I do not usually read thrillers, this one had me hooked from the very first page!