The Searcher in Cannonball Readers

Nov 01, 2020 Ashley rated it it was amazing

Shelves: a-dog-is-in-this, lit-fic, arcs-and-giveaways, fiction, mysteries, world-lit, manly-men-and-their-manparts, murder-most-foul

This was slower paced and less twisty turny than her other books but I loved that about it.

I liked her last book, The Witch Elm, but I loved this one. This is also a character study as well as a mystery/crime novel (that isn't part of her Dublin Murder series), but here the protagonist is a former cop from Chicago who retired and decided to try and find peace in the Irish countryside. He bought a beaten down farmhouse and has spent a lot of time trying to fix it up, and he still has a long ways This was slower paced and less twisty turny than her other books but I loved that about it.

I liked her last book, The Witch Elm, but I loved this one. This is also a character study as well as a mystery/crime novel (that isn't part of her Dublin Murder series), but here the protagonist is a former cop from Chicago who retired and decided to try and find peace in the Irish countryside. He bought a beaten down farmhouse and has spent a lot of time trying to fix it up, and he still has a long ways to go. We join Cal when he has been there a couple of months, just long enough to become somewhat familiar with the locals and their customs, enough to know that he doesn't know hardly anything about his new home or its inhabitants.

The plot slowly gains speed as we learn about Cal and his new town of Ardnakelty, and as a stray kid shows up at Cal's house and asks Cal to find his missing brother. The kid, Trey, is convinced that the brother, Brendan, has been kidnapped by someone, even though everyone in town believes that Brendan has just taken off for the city for one reason or another.

There's a lot of inner conflict here. Cal left behind his job and his country to try and reckon with his own mind, and there is a LOT in here about Cal contemplating his old career and what it did to him. It's kind of uncanny that this was published now when French must have written it long before summer 2020 and all the media coverage of police brutality in the US exploded because of the murder of George Floyd. Cal isn't a 100% good guy, and one of the reasons he left the force is that he felt that he could no longer trust himself to always know what the right thing was, let alone to do it, no matter the reason (though it's heavily implied the job had some consequences for him).

French plays with Western tropes all throughout this novel, and Cal is very much in the mold of the quiet man, the stoic loner come to the wilderness to get away from himself and the world. One of the things that French gets to play with here in having an ex-cop be her protagonist instead of a current one, is that she can play a lot more with shades of grey. It allows her to explore Cal's feelings about his moral code, about the job, and about what it did to him with a freedom that a character who's still in the trenches doesn't have.

(view spoiler)

I think, ultimately, French is interested in bringing nuance into everything she writes about, and she very much succeeds here. I was extremely satisfied by the ending of this book, and where the characters all end up, and I held such affection for three of them in particular (Cal and Trey among those three). If you go in to this book expecting something more slow and considered, you might come out of if liking it as much as I did. ...more

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Nov 02, 2020 Obsidian rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2020-library-books, favorites

Well this was hands down better than The Witch Elm. Though French doesn't follow the Dublin Murder Squad crew, she follows an ex-Chicago police officer, Cal Hooper. Cal leaves America for Ireland in order to get away from bad memories and the end of his marriage. I thought French did a great job with Cal's point of view and the development of secondary characters like Trey and Lena. I also loved the ending since it was typical French in my mind. What would you do in the situation that Cal finds Well this was hands down better than The Witch Elm. Though French doesn't follow the Dublin Murder Squad crew, she follows an ex-Chicago police officer, Cal Hooper. Cal leaves America for Ireland in order to get away from bad memories and the end of his marriage. I thought French did a great job with Cal's point of view and the development of secondary characters like Trey and Lena. I also loved the ending since it was typical French in my mind. What would you do in the situation that Cal finds himself in? Would you choose the same? You hold your breath through the last 1/3 of the book after everything is revealed just waiting for the shoe to drop. Could you keep living like that? I enjoyed this immensely and have my fingers crossed that French dropping hints about revisiting Rob from In the Woods in a future book comes true. I am still haunted by that book and Rob. I will not speak on The Likeness since that and "The Witch Elm" are my least favorite of French's books.

"The Searcher" follows ex-Chicago police officer, Cal Hooper. Cal is in his late 40s and has left America for an old house and some land in Ireland. We find out that Cal's marriage (which he was quite happy in) ended unexpectedly. He has an adult daughter that he finds hard to connect with. Yes, I had my eyebrows raised since the dude did just abandon the US (I get it though Cal) for another country. Cal is getting the lay of the land and is fixing up his home. His nearest neighbor, an older man named Mart comes by and gives him grief. Cal has a routine with the local shopkeeper and is starting to feel part of things. However, Cal starts to realize that someone is watching him and is concerned that the person wants to harm him. Cal eventually befriends the person watching him, Trey, a 12 year old local that comes to Cal because they want his help in finding their missing brother. Cal isn't a cop though and he really has no idea where to start, but he starts to dig, and finds that there's a darkness in his local community he had no idea of at all.

I really found myself liking Cal a lot. He has made mistakes, but is trying to do what he thinks is best for Trey. When Cal starts to realize that the community he has made himself home in, is not all sunshine and friendly neighbors you start to realize that he has walked himself into something that can end up causing him and Trey harm. Cal also you can tell misses his wife and daughter, but doesn't know how to communicate with either of them without it turning into a disappointing talk each time. I think watching him with Trey it's in the back of Cal's mind that he can do something here. What I did love though with this story is the parallels between what Cal ended up doing when an incident occurs with his daughter. In the end, Cal chooses different, and I think in that way French is signaling that things will be different here.

I liked the secondary characters like Mart, Lena, and Noreen in this one. There's a slowly dying farming community where Cal ends up and you can see the struggle for those who still live there to keep it going. But it's definitely going out on its last gasp if the young don't stay. This community reminded me a bit of my hometown (without the racism though) with the younger generation moving away and the homes/farms just falling into disrepair. We also get some glimpses of how the crash is still impacting Ireland and how many of the younger crowd are getting by.

I loved the writing in this one. Not going to lie though, the book starts off slow. It takes a bit for it to get going (around the 15 percent mark for me) since it seems such a departure for French to take on an American as the main protagonist. But once you get into the rhythm of the book it's hard to put it down.

The setting of this community at times seems pretty fantastic until Cal starts to uncover things that have gone on. Also, there's hints here and there about something darker in this part of the world, but Cal at times seems too blind to it. Or he wants to be blind to it.

I loved the ending, but wonder if that's the end or not. Will we get another story in a few years time with an older Trey? ...more

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May 31, 2021 Ashlie aka The Cheerbrarian rated it it was amazing

Shelves: cbr-13, cheerbrarian-recommends

TANA FRENCH TANA FRENCH TANA FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEENCH. I LOVE TANA FREEEEEENCH. Since I learned of Tana French, the Dublin murder series has been one of my number one recommended book series to anyone who asks (or ya know, stands nearby too long quietly, and thus gets accosted by my recommendation). I typically sum it up with "If you like Law and Order SVU you'll like her and her books" but am not sure that is fair to French, more so that's me casting a wide net about her wide appeal. Her writing is ...more

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Aug 09, 2021 Katie rated it it was amazing

Shelves: cannonball-13, read-women-21, murder-most-foul

In lesser hands Cal would be a cypher. But French is not lesser hands. We receive the narration from Cal and for the first 30 or so pages I was worried about being in his head, wondering if there would be enough depth. I should never have worried; Cal is an incredibly nuanced creation. Cal (and the other main cast) is a fully realized character in that French layers him with habits, characteristics, and an inner dialogue that flesh out the core of the man, even if he is no longer sure he can tru ...more

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Oct 11, 2020 Cait McKay rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fiction, my-library, cbr-12, mystery-thriller-suspense

This is a safe review; I'll give you no spoilers and I'll give you no major plot points- but I will let you know that no, we have not returned to the Dublin Murder Squad. While I found the departure disappointing in The Witch Elm, I found it thrilling here; the idyllic landscape filled with the insidious creep of small town communities. While we have not returned to the Murder Squad, we have returned to having a protagonist on the searching side of the law- and for that I am grateful.

Holy hell. This is a safe review; I'll give you no spoilers and I'll give you no major plot points- but I will let you know that no, we have not returned to the Dublin Murder Squad. While I found the departure disappointing in The Witch Elm, I found it thrilling here; the idyllic landscape filled with the insidious creep of small town communities. While we have not returned to the Murder Squad, we have returned to having a protagonist on the searching side of the law- and for that I am grateful.

Holy hell. I was gripped immediately, and I spent the last few days stealing pages here and there whenever I possibly could. I wanted to take it easy and to really savor this book, but I was hooked beyond hope of rescue within the first chapter. Obviously, I have no desire to tell anyone too much; The Witch Elm was ruined for me by JACKET COPY of all things, so I went in blind for The Searcher. The jacket copy here does not give away too much, but I do urge you to go in blind. Let the atmosphere drag you out into the sun dappled fields and boggy mountains of Western Ireland.

"The morning has turned lavishly beautiful. The autumn sun gave the greens of the fields an impossible, mythic radiance and transformed the back roads into light-muddled paths where a goblin with a fiddle, or a pretty maiden with a basket, could be waiting around every game and-bramble bend. Cal is in no mood to appreciate any of it. He feels like this specific beauty is central to the illusion that lulled him in stupidity, turned him into the peasant gazing slack-jawed at his hand full of gold coins till they melt into dead leaves in front of his eyes. If all this had happened in some depressing suburban clot of tract homes and ruler-measured lawns, he would have kept his wits about him."

French has stated that this is her crack at a Western, and boy is it ever! The Searcher is trope heavy; it is rich and ripe with classic Westerns- the language, the characters, the overall beats of the plot- it is pulpy, dusty, and spattered in old blood. This is a full-on genre novel, and the adherence to the well-trodden beats would be clunky in the hands of anyone else, but French grips the reins tight. Her sense of time and space is, as always, masterful. No one writes as clear a timeline; her spaces are lived in, well-paced, and strung tight. You will jump with every snapped twig. Her townsfolk are full of folksy aphorisms and genuine uncontrolled power. Characters toss out lines like "My granddad was after dying the month before that, of a stroke. That took him four days. Life seems like a big thing when it takes four days for all of it to leave a man. When it's gone in a few sec- and, it looks awful small all of a sudden" over tea like they're discussing the weather.

This novel will make an excellent TV or film adaptation; I - for once- want to see a visual adaptation because I would love to really see this mean little world come to life; the writing is missing something, but I am itching to see what a director like James Mangold could do; bring this piece full circle back to the Westerns and Samurai films that built the bones. I hollered, laughed, shouted my fair share of "WHAT?!" and found myself wiping away tears more than once. It is a well-trod but still thrillingly wild ride. ...more

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Jan 08, 2021 Corielle rated it it was amazing

357 days from now, when I'm trying to recall my favorite books from 2021, I know this will be on the list ...more

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Nov 27, 2020 Carole Bell rated it really liked it

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Jan 17, 2021 Meagan rated it really liked it

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Oct 17, 2020 Jen rated it really liked it

Shelves: genre-crime, genre-mystery, genre-fiction, awesome-audio-narrator, audioreads, library, year-read-2020, genre-contemporary, own-future, the-dog-dies

3.5 stars

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