First thoughts on In the Woods

So, I've been reading In the Woods for a few days. I was curious about it because it had won some awards and blogger praise but other people complained that it was slow or the ending was disappointing and unfortunately from the small smattering of GR reviews I've read, I know what the nature of the disappointment is so bollocks to people who say I don't want to spoiler stuff then promptly do.

I wonder now if the ending is so bad that people decided they didn't like the book. Or do they read a mystery solely for the mystery and its artistry is irrelevant? This book is smashing. I can't get up to make myself tea because I don't want to stop reading. But more than that, the construction of the book has the intricate delicacy of a Chinese puzzle box constructed seamlessly by a successful graduate of a creative writing program. There's simply no way Tana French didn't study writing somewhere. The leisurely buildup of dread, the meticulous choice of (unreliable?) narrator, the lovely prose, the rendering of minutiae of daily routine into page-turning moments.

I'm afraid there's going to be some nasty secret about Ryan come out at the end of the book for all the hints that things go to shite as well as his spotty memory and clearly imminent crackup. 

I learned that Knocknaree (a commuter town south of Dublin where the murders take place) means "hill of the King." Apparently, there are archeological sites there as well just as in the book.

I could almost type out half the book in the interest of footnoting lines that I liked. Here is a sex scene, or more properly the build-up to it. Not that I love sex scenes that much but it's awfully hard to write one and not sound silly (I have literary nightmares over the time Charlaine Harris wrote about a male suitor's "phallus") or like some romantic bosom heaver my best friend would have been reading in high school while swearing she read to learn about history. And seriously, Playboy does have good articles.

Anyways, this is lovely even if it probably is the beginning of the wreckage of the thus far sibling-like detective partnership of Rob Ryan and Cassie Maddox:

We lay very still. I could feel the air around us changing, blooming and shimmering like the air over a scorching road. My heart was speeding, or hers was banging against my chest, I'm not sure. I turned Cassie in my arms and kisser her, and after a moment she kissed me back. I know I said that I always choose the anticlimactic over the irrevocable, and yes of course, what I meant was that I have always been a coward, but I lied: not always, there was that night, there was that one time.