Did I miss something?

[Florencia]

I just finished "In the Woods" and have mixed feelings.The resolution of Katy's murder was fairly predictable but enjoyable nonetheless. I didn't feel too disappointed about the 1984 case as I thought that it would be dealt with in a different book, but now that you guys said that the following novels narrate different cases and have different MCs I'm starting to get worried haha. I sort of liked Rob despite the fact that he's a jerk, and the way things ended up between Cassie and him made me sad, they did love each other. I hope Tana writes the book we're all waiting for: One where the 1984 case is solved and Rob and Cassie are reunited. Hopefully, one that won't be unnecessarily long like this one.

[Matt]

@Florencia, welcome to the club!

#BringBackRobRyan
#OperationFindPeterAndJamie
#RobAndCassieTrueDetective

[Ramona]

Monica wrote: "I'm sure the open-endedness was intentional. Think "sequel." Has anyone read The Likeness, which tells Katy's story?

The Likeness is a totally different book with Cassie as the main character. It is not a sequel. It could be at least 100 pages shorter, but the author is extremely descriptive and I felt like the book would never end.

"

Jan wrote: "I felt completely ripped off by this book! The lack of resolution in the first murder case is inexcusable. Why bother to read a novel of this type without it? Before I reached the final pages, I wa..."

Jan wrote: "I felt completely ripped off by this book! The lack of resolution in the first murder case is inexcusable. Why bother to read a novel of this type without it? Before I reached the final pages, I wa..."

[Jennifer]

Matt wrote: "@Florencia, welcome to the club!

#BringBackRobRyan
#OperationFindPeterAndJamie
#RobAndCassieTrueDetective"

I finished In the Woods about 10 days ago, gave it 5 stars, have recommended it to many, and yet agree with everyone's frustrations expressed here. My reason for stumbling upon this thread is that I am 1/4 way thru The Likeness (great so far) and suddenly felt compelled to google whether or not Rob Ryan resurfaces in a subsequent Tana French novel so that I can look forward to that one. I laughed at these hashtags. Yeah, I guess I'm in the club now too.

[E.A.]

Heidi wrote: "Ya, I just ended up confused. I was hoping Adam Ryan would find closure, and myself as well, at the end of the book. But no. Disappointing."
He can't find closure if he's the one who did it...

[Katie]

*** SPOILERS ABOUND***
Super late to this party, but I just finished and the metal leaf from the final scene is killing me. I have this nagging feeling it was mentioned previously (in the 400+ pages) but my recall is failing me - which is ironic. Did anyone make a breakthrough?

[Sharon]

Ryan is an unreliable narrator. The reader honestly doesn't know what is truth and what is not. For all we know, he's in a hospital somewhere on medication and this is all a dream. I don't think so, but the man has unresolved issues and that affects everything. he touches. Once the reader accepts that and filters his story through that lens, the story gets better. Of course, that sort of thing doesn't appeal to everyone and if it doesn't, its not a character flaw or anything, just personal taste. Part of me wonders if this is all part of a cunning plan to make us buy all the books in hope that someday we might get a resolution to this. Personally, I would like to see another detective, someone more reliable this time, take up this investigation.

[Diane]

I have mixed feelings...BUT I believe that the artifact at the end was Peter's. Ryan was squeezing it so hard that it left marks on his hand. I believe seeing the arrowhead was the closure he needed.

[Leon]

What if Rob did completely remember the 1984 event during his night in the woods. He goes back to Cassie's place and he tells her what he remembered. What if Rob is the killer? As others have mentioned, there are a lot of inconsistencies with Rob's narration, so what if he tells Cassie what he remembers and she cannot stand to be near him, but also because she loves him like a brother she cannot turn him in?

What if they never sleep together, Rob just tells us that this is what happened and is the reason for their breakdown in friendship. If two long term platonic friends sleep together the result may put tension on the friendship, but is unlikely to result in outright hostility.

As soon as you entertain the idea that Rob is manipulating the reader then there are several events that of tweaked slightly turn the whole story on its head.

The recollections of witnesses and suspects of the 1984 case only include the "supernatursl" elements (giant bird, laughing from unknown source, feeling on unreality) when they are recounted to rob only, when cas or sam are also present the recollections are grounded in reality.

Also rob had many supernatural experiences not witnessed by anyone else, the baby bird falling out of the fireplace, the large creature on the road etc.

His recollections of peter being the one to stop the bullying of the classmate wally, and then rob's mother correcting him to say it was he that was the hero implies some kind of dissociation with himself.

What if, after witnessing the rape, Rob tried to do the same to jamie/peter? What if the recollection of being a bigger kid and not being able to keep up with his friends jumping from the tower and running away is because he is actually the one chasing the other two.

It is Jamie's last day in town, maybe it was his last chance to act on some crush and after witnessing the forceful rape of another woman, rob tries the same and it all goes wrong?

What if he goes back to to Cassie's place with freshly rediscovered memories of an attempted rape/double murder and then in his psychotic state rapes cassie? This would also explain the sudden hostility, although i like the idea more that they didn't sleep together and he disclosed he is a murderer.

I think the metal leafshaped object at the end is a spear head or arrow head and is the murder weapon he used. It goes with the cuts in his own shirt (cut to strips), the large amount of Jamie's blood in his shoes, and the fact he describes feeling his pulse beating when it is handed to him as he recognises it.

Just a theory, because otherwise the ending sucks.

[Matt]

Leon wrote: "What if Rob did completely remember the 1984 event during his night in the woods. He goes back to Cassie's place and he tells her what he remembered. What if Rob is the killer? As others have menti..."

If you read The Likeness, a story from Cassie's perspective, you learn more about Cassie's relationship with Rob.

[Jonathan]

I really enjoyed the novel and had a hard time putting it down. I will say I was rather annoyed with the ending. I know people say it’s raw and real that it’d go unsolved....but I don’t read mysteries to have a super realistic outcome that’s rather frustrating. I read fiction mysteries because figuring out what happened is the whole point of the book. The conclusion is vital to the ending otherwise what was all the suspense and build up for? Just to tease and frustrate the reader? Also I wasn’t a huge fan of how Ryan just turned into an ass after they slept together...what was that all about? I know he’s messed up but that’s a trend that kinda frustrates me in modern fiction...Gillian Flynn, James Elroy, Mary Kubica, Paula Hawkins....and many others seem hellbent in writing and developing characters that are purely unlikeable

[Jennifer]

Leon - A for effort. That theory rocked. But having read the rest of the Dublin murder series, not sure it holds up.

[N]

Man, I thought I was way, way too late in reading this book to find an ongoing thread. Before reading on, please note that this will speak primarily about In the Woods but also include details from The Likeness, so I suppose this speaks about both books in the end, especially at the end of this. But this won't mention anything thereafter as I have not read those books. So be warned, spoilers ahead. Hopefully nothing in the subsequent books invalidates these points, though from what little I've gathered it doesn't seem like the 1984 case, Cassie, or Rob are revisited in any subsequent novel to date...very much to my dismay...

------

After I finished ITW, one of my first thoughts was about what would have to be the chasmic split in opinion regarding the ending, which seems to have been confirmed throughout the two main threads on this forum. Considering the author's thoughts on her three options for an ending, it seems her goal was to leave with the reader the highest degree of emotional response without trying to sway that response in a positive or negative direction. If that's the case, one needs to look no further than this forum to see she brilliantly succeeded. I found myself delightfully crushed, joyfully infuriated. Not by the last scene but by Rob's 4am call to Cassie, which I considered to be my "ending" given I would have snapped the book in half had it not been a paperback. I didn't read the final scene on the motorway construction site until a few days later, reeling from the emotion of that painfully brief paragraph. Again, joyfully infuriated, delightfully crushed.

I was perfectly fine with the final scene. As hopeful as I was in finding out what happened in 1984, it dawned on me that this very well might not happen once Rob dashed out of his sleeping bag and sprinted out of the woods. For me, the narrative framed this scene as the "now-or-never" moment, so it was relatively easy for me to detach from the prospect of a solid revelation once it passed. However, I am one that read this book with the Devlin case more in mind than the 1984 case. I see here others did not, so I completely understand if that point falls woefully short for those readers.

Considering only the actual incident, the blood found inside Rob's shoes is the same type as his own and Jamie's, but not Peter's. Of all the case's details, this very much stood out more than the rest. It allows me to consider the possibility that Jamie and Peter met different fates. That Peter may have survived that day. If it's feasible to consider Adam as a suspect, and I think it is, one has to avoid ruling out Peter when taking this into account. This doesn't seem to be a point where Rob would lie, either, as the details are laid out very clearly, and if we as readers are to assume the role of a "character" in terms of Rob speaking directly to us, then it follows easily that these would be facts that we could easily "check", so to speak.

For my money, though, Kiernan's meeting with Cassie is the nexus of truth. The "tiny compression to the corners of (Cassie's) mouth" (p.159) certainly invites at least curiosity, if not outright suspicion, of Rob's involvement. I think this moment is somehow tied to the moment when they are about to grill Jonathan, and Cassie looks up at Rob and says "You shouldn't be doing this interview. (p. 251), which would further indicate some suspicion of Rob. But this is never revisited, and in terms of omission, I found this to be my lone yet significant source of frustration with the author. Unless it comes up in a future novel, I find it difficult to see the reason behind including these moments at all.

Despite the lack of clues about this moment, though, I still struggle to see that which Cassie leaves unsaid as having to do with compelling points made by Kiernan regarding Rob's involvement. I feel as though she would begin to doubt Rob's claim of not remembering the incident, and a gradual distancing from him would begin at that time. The fact that nearly every time Cassie remembers Rob in TL is with an enduring fondness, even considering his emotional abuse of her, is convincing enough for me that she did not think this. She wanted him present in the initial case meeting when she's being physically compared to Lexie. She called him from the alleyway outside Whitethorn, apparently to simply hear his voice. She tells Daniel about him when he wonders if she has anything worth holding onto. These do not appear to be thoughts and actions indicating her belief in his involvement. I think that Kiernan expressed his own thoughts about Rob's involvement, and she simply declined to mention it to him out of mercy.

Those upset at the absence of resolution in the final scene should try to focus on his decision to refuse the artifact the motorway worker found and on the sight of the wood being cut down for good. To me, these indicate that Rob has found the ability to let go of that incident as permanently as possible. The loss of those memories, with the exception of the one in which Jamie's telling them that she isn't leaving after all (p. 419), tell me he's in a place where he can just take away what was good of his childhood spent with them. Which, come to think of it, might have given him some true perspective of his present, though perhaps a bit too late, because...

Let's be real. Those of us worked up, one way or the other, about the ending to ITW (or TL, for the following reason) aren't so because of anything related to crime. It's because Cassandra Maddox and Robert Ryan spent the vast majority of this book showing us how dazzlingly great they were for one another. Then that fateful night comes to pass, and Rob fails miserably to see in himself the qualities needed to "take the irrevocable leap", as the author puts it. In his own words, Rob finds the only alternative to be to cut off all communication, and since that can't be applied literally in this instance, he decides to cut off all emotional communication instead. He feels he's ruined a great friendship in the blink of an eye, but what I think he's done is what he said he would do: lie. To himself. He didn't "stop falling in love" (p.12). He unconsciously framed their time together as a budding friendship in an effort to avoid seeing it how we saw it. All to avoid that certain leap...

And it was shared, too. No matter what Cassie says she saw right before Daniel pulls the trigger. No matter what she said when Sam asked if things with Rob were over at the end of TL. A number of times throughout TL, Sam ends a conversation with Cassie with an "I love you", to which she does not reply in kind. And although she is drunk, I don't think it's a distortion of truth but a revealing of it when she imagines Sam right beside Daniel when they kiss, and her reaction is about how Sam is coddling, smothering, borderline possessive (thinking back to their fight in her flat at the beginning of TL). When I read that, I thought back to when Rob and Cassie first met in ITW. When her Vespa wouldn't start and he made some disparaging, faintly sexist remark. She retorts by acting cynically as the damsel-in-distress, and Rob remarks about how he really started to like her from that point. Then I consider all the times afterward when either of them are in an emotionally-vulnerable state, and how each time it's noted that the other does well to remain at a distance, to not wrap them up in a big hug, to allow some time to pass before they're able to carry on normally again.

To no fault of her own, Cassie settled with Sam. Given the circumstances, who could blame her? And with that settlement, that potential was ripped from the readers hands. Anyone even vaguely aligned with this must be thinking what I am now: If they could just get in the same room again, Cassie and Rob. That's all it would take. No knock against Sam. Perfectly swell person, but he simply got there too late. We had already identified with Cassie and Rob. And when Cassie puts the phone down after Rob calls at 4am, and says "He told me he loved me, so I wanted to see who it was. But he turned out to be looking for Britney." (p. 425), there's that little hint: however cruel in the moment, there was that same playfulness. And, at least for me, that was the true absence of resolution. That they both still retained some small bit of those feelings for one another shared throughout the book.

[sublimosa]

N wrote: "Man, I thought I was way, way too late in reading this book to find an ongoing thread. Before reading on, please note that this will speak primarily about
In the Woods but also include details from The Likeness, so I suppose this speaks about both books in the end, especially at the end of this. But this
won't mention anything thereafter as I have not read those books. So be warned, spoilers ahead. Hopefully nothing in the subsequent books invalidates these
points, though from what little I've gathered it doesn't seem like the 1984 case, Cassie, or Rob are revisited in any subsequent novel to date...very much
to my dismay...

------

After I finished ITW, one of my first thoughts was about what would have to be the chasmic split in opinion regarding the ending, which seems to have been
confirmed throughout the two main threads on this forum. Considering the author's thoughts on her three options for an ending, it seems her goal was to
leave with the reader the highest degree of emotional response without trying to sway that response in a positive or negative direction. If that's the
case, one needs to look no further than this forum to see she brilliantly succeeded. I found myself delightfully crushed, joyfully infuriated. "
Great description! I think the only other book that had me so worked up would be Jane Eyre (when she considers St. John's question) and perhaps The Husband's Secret by Lianne Moriarty. While I hated The Husband's Secret at first (it infuriated me), it is probably my favorite of LM's now, not for the enjoyment of reading it, but for the thought it provoked and the viewpoints I got from other readers.
Tana French is a great writer, keep reading.

[Katherine]

I know I’m really late in this discussion. I’ve just read In the Wood and have a question about a passage late in the story Ryan is reflecting on Cassie and what went wrong and he says, “She was always the stubborn one, of us two. I think she transferred because she had lied to O’Kelly and she lied to Rosalind Devlin, and both of them had believed her; and because, when she told me the truth, I had called her a liar.” When did he call her a liar? The story was very confusing in lots of places; but this one left me baffled. Can anyone help? Thanks.

[Robin Wright]

Hello, super late to the party here. Just read In the Woods. I've only seen one mention of this point in the thread and I'm curious what people think. to me the fundamental implausibility of this whole novel is that the Dublin police and specifically O'Reilly did not know that Rob Ryan the detective was also Andy Ryan the sole survivor of the Knocknaree disappearance.

Even if they had not realized it when Rob Ryan was first hired, the old case surfaced in the investigation of the new case. there were too many eyes on this case, including all the reporters, for someone to not make the connection.

I also thought it was improbable that none of the three detectives had confirmed with certainty the age of Rosalind until the very end. those were the two big improbabilities to me.

there were many things about the book that I did like. I liked the way the characters were all complex and none of them were completely likeable or unlikeable. some of them started out to me to be likable and ended up unlikable. not surprisingly, Rosalind is one of those. The other one that I found to be unlikable is Adam / Rob Ryan.

I found the ending to actually be more realistic because in real life a lot of these things never get solved. It's tragic but it's true. That ending did not really bother me so much. And despite my frustration with those two improbabilities I do intend to read the next book in the series.