I have to go, it must be now...

In the Woods by Tana French

The bit for the ADD-ers: I was set to be spooked, to hear noises I shouldn't, to flip pages to see what happened and then flip back because I didn't understand how that happened with what I just read. It... sort of happened like that? However, it gripped me from the beginning, but perhaps one red herring too many left my body temperature nearly at room temperature by the end. Rather than chilled or spine-tingled, that is.

Want to hear more? Put on them hiking boots: Detective novels are either good because of the mystery or good because of the characters solving the mystery, and when the novel started I was excited to be getting a bit of both. Cassie and Robert Ryan were a lovely detective duo to be spending 450 pages with, and with Ryan narrating, and a trifle unreliable at that, I started raising my expectations page after page.

It's funny, because the expectations started high right with the cover art - it's just such darn good design - and I wanted to believe that I would see the woods wending their way through the words. For 75% of the novel, they did - but once Ryan spends the night in the woods that the reader has wanted from page one, it seems to coast on cruise control.

The Story: Robert Ryan is a detective in Ireland's murder squad - and a kid has been murdered right next to a thicket where 20 years before, Ryan was found with blood in his shoes and his two friends missing. In a startling display of poor decision-making, he and his partner take the case. Even though he can't remember a lick of what happened the afternoon his friends went missing, even though he's still emotional about it, even though he knows it might mess with what they will find.

More: It's tough to review a detective story because a lot of the enjoyment of the novel hinges on the end - how the pieces fell into place, and how satisfying it feels to place that final piece in and see the whole picture. I can tell you I was kind of satisfied - not 100 percent, but nearly. What French excelled at, though, was the two characters - Maddox and Ryan were a perfect duo, and I loved reading their interaction with one another. There's a lot of description of camaraderie that would have fallen flat if she didn't show their easy chemistry.

And the writing sparkles too - Ryan (playing narrator) apologizes for his metaphors and conceits, but they account for a lot of the joy of reading it. I can't exactly place my finger on why In the Woods didn't enthrall me to the end... but I think some of that blame lays squarely on a property developing subplot that goes literally nowhere. It was a base that had to be covered, maybe, but not to the extant it was.

Should you read it? You might want to - the duo of Ryan and Maddox is pretty irresistible, and the beats of the detective novel still seem fresh. But perhaps this one is meant to be retrieved from the library.