Much like her previous standalone novel, The Witch Elm, Tana French’s The Searcher meanders its way into a mystery with a deliberate patience. Cal Hooper is an outsider in his rural Irish town, and before he can be ensnared by a missing person case, Cal—and by extension the reader—must get his footing in his new community. It’s this nuance, a signature of French’s writing, that makes this novel more than just a mystery; it’s also an exploration of rural poverty and the closely intertwined lives of people who are just trying to scratch out a living.
Cal is a former Chicago detective burned out from his job, licking his wounds after his divorce and struggling to reconnect with his adult daughter. His decision to move to Ireland and fix up a ramshackle farmhouse feels impulsive, but Cal is almost immediately centered by the beautiful landscape and by the kindness of his neighbors. Gossip gets around through, and soon Cal finds 13-year-old Trey Reddy on his doorstep. Trey’s 19-year-old brother Brendan has vanished and Trey believes that he’s been met with foul play.
The Irish police, and indeed Brendan’s own mother, believe Brendan left of his volition. The Reddys are poor, Brendan didn’t make it into college, and his girlfriend recently broke up with him. With few prospects, it’s reasonable to assume that he fled to Dublin like many teens before him. Trey’s insistence rattles something in Cal, however, and as he begins a quiet investigation into Brendan's disappearance, he realizes that his tiny community is full of secrets and people who don’t want Brendan found. French scrapes away at the idyllic landscape of rural Ireland and reveals the vices that plague every village and town, including drugs like methamphetamine. As the book progresses, Cal’s idyllic country adventure begins to rot around the edges.
What sets The Searcher apart from French’s earlier novels is its depiction of how deeply intertwined the residents of the village are—with young people leaving the area, farms struggling and poverty and drug use plaguing the area, each person is somehow dependent on his or her neighbors for survival. This is not a place where Cal can bury his head in the sand. Evocative and lyrical, The Searcher is a mystery worth reading slowly to savor every perfectly rendered detail.
