In The Woods

Rob Ryan, along with his partner Cassie Maddox land the biggest murder case of their police careers when a 12-year-old girl has been found murdered in the woods by a Dublin Suburb. For Cassie, this is the career boost of a lifetime…
but for Ryan it is something more…
Twenty years previous, Ryan (then Adam) at the same age that the now murdered girl was, was part of a group of three best friends that entered that same woods feeling their whole lives were before them… Ryan was the only one to leave the woods, his sneakers covered in blood, with no memory as to what happened… the other two children, were never found.
No one knows about Ryan’s's past history with the woods or the connection the two children never found… no one, except Cassie.
Although stir carrying many scars from his own experience, Ryan does his best to push the past back into the past while applying all his skills to find the killer of the present… yet in his subconsciousness, he can not help but wonder if the two are not somehow linked together…
“What I warn you to remember is that I am a detective. Our relationship with the truth is fundamental, but cracked, refracting confusingly like fragmented glass. It is the core of our careers, the endgame of every move we make, and we pursue it with strategies painstakingly constructed of lies … and every variation on deception. The truth is the most desirable woman in the world and we are the most jealous lovers, reflexively denying anyone else the slightest glimpse of her. We betray her routinely … This is my job … What I am telling you, before you begin my story, is this–two things: I crave truth. And I lie.”
~Opening to In The Woods by Tana French
This audio is a case of internet buzz that brought me make this purchase. I had heard Tana French was an incredible writer, I had heard that the audio was fantastic… knowing that I can get to audio and through audio faster than I can another book on the pile, I went audio.
Diving into this audio I was instantly engrossed in the back story of Ryan’s childhood nightmare and believed this was going to be an incredible story. I have always enjoyed a great murder mystery, probably one of the earliest genres of choice in my youth reading career (oh yes… I feel it is a career
) so I settled in for an amazing ride…
I enjoyed the play back and forth by police partners Ryan and Cassie… I loved that Cassie was not a dopey girly girl but a strong and vile partner to Ryan… what he missed she found, and vise versa.
As the story unfolds into a great and disturbing tale of a family with too many secrets, and the entwining of the two stories both past and present I felt like a kid on the edge of my seat holding the book tight and the blanket up to just below my eyes tighter.
And then just when I was think this book.audio was a rave… the end failed big time for me. It failed so big in fact… I thought I must have missed something. It could not end that way I thought… I have strings left over… they are unraveled… where is my somewhat neat package tied up in a bow?
But no – no package… and no bow.
I even looked at a few other reviews to make sure that I accurate that there was no closure… and its true… at least as far as I am concerned I felt a little cheated in the end, like I was building excitement on this rollercoaster – up,up,up and then…
no exciting drop…. just flat.
Will I read Tana French again? Absolutely… I hear her book The Likeness (also featuring Cassie Maddox) is pretty awesome… so yeah, I will try again.