In the Woods

Award-winning, decades-spanning detective tale.
In the Woods takes a creepy backstory — three children go into the woods in 1984 and only one comes out alive, bleeding and unable to reveal the whereabouts of his playmates — and instead of solving the mystery outright, allows it to serve as a macabre backdrop when the murder of an attractive teenage blonde in Greater Dublin is linked to the decades-old crime. Protagonist Rob Ryan, the bleeding boy in the woods, eventually matures into a charming, cocky police detective. Ryan's boarding school posh accent, arch observations about his colleagues (especially his partner and best friend Cassie Maddox) and unreliable narration about past and present events are expertly handled by narrator Steven Crossley's nimble vocal stylings. Irish-American author French's debut novel has already been feted with a number of award nominations, most notably for the Edgar and the Irish Book Awards, and it's easy to understand the acclaim. The audiobook can't quite overcome the novel's tendency to cram in too many descriptions and plot twists, but it accentuates the shocker ending and French's keen understanding of Dublin's sinister underbelly.