Breakaway Books

Authored by Tana French; Published 2020; Mystery

⭐️⭐️⭐️ / 🏖️🏖️🏖️🏖️

The Searcher is not a pulse-pounding page-turning thriller. It is less about the urgent need to find a murderer and more about how a community forms, dissolves, and can turn against one of their own. It’s paced more like a leisurely amble through the Irish countryside, a perfect novel for a chilly fall afternoon.

The Searcher follows Cal Hooper, a divorced detective retired from the Chicago police department, as he settles into a small town in the Irish countryside. While the only thing he has in mind for his time is renovating his somewhat dilapidated home, a young child named Trey soon comes and begs his assistance in finding their brother Brendan, who has disappeared. Wary of disrupting the community he has only recently joined, Cal begins to gently snoop around but quickly raises the hackles of the other townspeople.

Among the most attractive elements of this novel is the relationship between Cal and Trey—there is something heartwarming and sweet about it. Cal can’t quite bring himself to turn them away, despite his fervent desire for peace, and instead takes them under their wing, teaching them how to repair a house and eventually opening up to the possibility of looking for their missing brother. This relationship is really the pulsing heart of the novel, the emotional core that shows who Cal is and cracks open his shell enough to reveal something of his family and his past. 

The other major driving force in the narrative is the townspeople: This is a small town novel; everyone knows everyone’s business, and the townspeople as a collective feel like a main character. The entire dynamic of the novel is shaped by Cal adjusting from big city Chicago culture to countryside Ireland, and gradually becoming aware of how much the people around him know. It can have a slightly eery edge to it—I certainly wouldn’t want to be wondering who’s peeking through my window at night. This dynamic means the mystery as a whole is heavy on community-oriented justice and very light on law enforcement involvement. The crime itself is not overly complicated; rather, it’s the lengths to which Cal must go to simultaneously solve the crime and keep the peace that make it interesting.

The Searcher is a great novel to sink into for a slow, easy-read mystery that is more about human nature than the Irish justice system.