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Book Review: In The Woods by Tana French

cover art for In The Woods by Tana French

In The Woods(Dublin Murder Squad #1) by Tana French

Viking, 2007

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0670038602

Available: Used hardcover, Kindle edition, paperback, mass market paperback, audiobook.

( Bookshop.org | Amazon.com )

 

 

In one of the sessions at StokerCon this year panelists brought up the Suburban Gothic. Does it exist? The suburbs probably don’t seem like a source of dark family secrets and horrific events to you,  but I live in the suburbs, and there’s a lot more hidden beneath the surface than most people might expect.

 

What better place to start exploring Suburban Gothic than with In the Woods (Dublin Murder Squad #1) by Tana French? Taking place in 2004 Ireland, this is a messed up story from the beginning. Twenty years ago, three twelve-year-old kids disappeared into the wooded area behind their subdivision, and only one of them was found, with his clothes covered in blood, unable to remember anything. The survivor, Adam Ryan, moved across the country, started going by another name, and eventually worked his way up though police bureaucracy to the elite Dublin Murder Squad. Now a new murder has been committed in the same place… is it possible it is the same person responsible for his friends’ disappearance? Rob’s partner Cassie is doubtful that he can be objective, but she keeps his secret as the two of them investigate the murder of a twelve-year-old girl found on a sacrificial altar at an archaeological site near the woods.

 

Rob, the narrator, is an unreliable narrator who disintegrates in front of the reader’s eyes as his memories start to unravel and the personality he’s constructed for himself since his friends’ disappearance begins to peel away. It’s unclear even how much of what he’s telling us is actually happening and how much his mind is playing tricks on him as he and Cassie track down leads on their current case, thinking that perhaps it will also lead to the solution of Rob’s friends’ disappearance. In the midst of it all the workers at the dig are up against a deadline as developers plan to dig up the site to start construction on a motorway, and (speaking from experience here) there’s nothing like corrupt developers with money on the line and government officials in their pocket to liven up surburbanites against new construction.

 

French does a great job with build ups, but I felt her follow through on plot points and building relationships was sometimes a let down, or confusing. Character development is confusing, possibly because we are seeing everything through Rob’s eyes and his perceptions are unreliable. Rob himself is not an especially likable character–and from the beginning pages we know he can’t be trusted– but I loved the friendship between Rob and Cassie and was not happy with how French handled it at the end. French’s language can be evocative and lyrical: the woods of the title appear a magical, haunted place, even as close to the rather prosaic subdivision Rob, and the victim he is investigating, grew up in.

 

Compelling and disturbing until the last few pages (there is one major, essential piece of the story that is never explained, leaving it with a bothersome hole at the endcover art for In The Woods by Tana French) Tana French has successfully evoked Suburban Gothic, the darkness that lies under the pleasant-looking surface of suburbia.

Posted on June 11, 2021 by , Reply

Book Review: From the Depths: Terrifying Tales by Richard Saxon

cover art for From the Depths by Richard Saxon

From the Depths: Terrifying Tales by Richard Saxon

Velox Books, 2021

ISBN 979-8745999574

Available: Paperback, Kindle ( Bookshop.org  |  Amazon.com )

 

It’s always a pleasure to discover a new author of dark fiction, especially when his debut collection is innovative, interesting and extremely entertaining.

 

This is the case with Richard Saxon, whose short story collection is characterized, first of all, by the unusual, long titles of each tale, which give you a hint of what is waiting for you in the following pages.

 

Here are some examples of the more accomplished stories.

 

“The Ocean is Much Deeper Than We Thought” is a tense, riveting piece blending SF and horror, about some mysterious, dangerous creatures living in the deepest part of the ocean, while “I Woke Up During Surgery. They Weren’t Trying to Save Me” is a very disquieting tale of medical horror where a man cured from cancer develops a scary kind of power.

 

The tell-tale title “My Job is to Watch People Die” perfectly describes the content of that unusual, well crafted story, but in  “We Have Been Guarding an Empty Room for the Past Five Years. Today We Found Something Inside”, a slightly surrealistic piece, the horrific nature of the story becomes apparent only at the end.

 

In the excellent “Every Year on My Birthday, I Have to Die”, a man keeps dying and then coming back to life when someone else takes on his death, while in “A Man Knocked at My Door at Midnight, He Gave Me A Horrible Choice”, an insightful tale with a Twilight Zone feel, the meaning (or the lack of it) of our existence on Earth is cleverly addressed.

 

“Arbor Vitae” effectively describes the story of a woman who makes an unusual, terrible bargain to protect her son.

 

The best story in the volume to me is “ My Favorite Twitch Streamer Just Died. He’ s Still Online”, an outstanding piece investigating the apparently tragic mystery of after-life.

 

I strongly recommend this superb collection to every lover of dark, speculative fiction.

 

Reviewed by Mario Guslandi

Posted on June 3, 2021 by , Reply

Book Review: Constance by Matthew Fitzsimmons

cover art for Constance by Matthew Fitzsimmons

Constance by Matthew Fitzsimmons

Thomas & Mercer, 2021 (release date Sept. 1 2021)

ISBN: 9781542014274

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition, audiobook ( Bookshop.org | Amazon.com )

 

Constance is an outstanding thriller written in the vein of Michael Crichton.  It’s extremely fast paced and  emotionally deep. Its version of Earth in the future is beautifully detailed, with a lot of thought put in to how technology may evolve in the next 15 years.  This is a “can’t miss” book, and it wouldn’t be surprising to see Hollywood snap it up, it would be perfect material for Christopher Nolan (Interstellar, Inception) to direct.

 

The backbone of the book centers on human cloning, but not for replacement parts.  It’s for cloning replacement human beings in the event of  their untimely deaths.  Anyone with a clone in stasis has to re-download their consciousness into the clone every thirty days.  If a person dies, the clone is activated and the only memory lag should be between the last “refresh” of the clone and their time of death.   The protagonist, Constance D’Arcy, has a clone, a gift from her eccentric and very rich aunt.  When Constance wakes from her latest refresh, she learns she is not Constance, but Constance’s clone, just activated after 18 months of the original Constance being missing.  The clone (called “Con” here to eliminate confusion) is quickly on the run for her life, as various parties want her for… something.  It’s a complex puzzle for Con to learn what Constance was up to in the last 18 months, and how it relates to her being hunted by the various antagonists in the story.

 

Any more would spoil the plot, but it’s enough to say this is an incredible novel.  The characters are perfectly done and filled with depth, the thrills never stop, and the puzzle is a tough one to unravel as you read it.  Also, the science is explained well enough that the average reader won’t get overwhelmed.  Like the movie Inception, there are layers to the story, in terms of clones… and their clones… and the consciousness of some characters cloned into completely new bodies unrelated to the original.  It might be a lot to handle, but the author’s clear style keeps it easy to follow for the reader.  It helps make the story great, as the reader will never know for sure who a character actually is, until the author reveals it.  In the hands of a less talented author this could have been a labyrinthine mess, but Fitzsimmons pulls it off to perfection.

 

Fitzsimmons also does an excellent job painting some of the ethical and political problems of cloning into the story.  Different viewpoints on cloning are expressed through characters that are essential to the story.  The push/pull dynamic between the characters and their viewpoints on cloning adds depth to the story without controlling the narrative, and it is extremely well done.

 

Simply put, anyone who loves a good story has to get this one when it is released.  For a thriller, it doesn’t get any better than this.  Highly recommended.

 

Contains: profanity, mild violence

 

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson

Posted on June 1, 2021 by , Reply
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