THE KEEPER, by Tana French
Near the end of Tana French’s latest intoxicating excursion into the tangled alliances and murderous undercurrents of a rural village in Ireland, a terrified woman named Lena Dunne sits alone in her house in a storm, waiting for disaster.
She hears the cars pull up, three in all. She grabs a shotgun, though she doesn’t think it will make much difference, and imagines being washed into oblivion. “The banging on the door, when it starts, doesn’t make her jump,” French writes. “She hopes if she closes her eyes and lets herself fall, the roaring water will sweep her away before they can get her.”
The scene that follows is shocking, surprising, slyly funny and also deadly serious. It sends the plot hurtling in a new direction. And it’s a small example of why, through 10 books, French has remained one of the most consistently exciting mystery writers around.
“The Keeper” is the final book in a trilogy that began when Cal Hooper, a 50ish detective from Chicago, retired to the fictional farming community of Ardnakelty in western Ireland. He (foolishly) dreamed of settling quietly into a life free of drama or crime. But Ardnakelty, as layered and complicated a character as any person, has steadily dragged him ever deeper into its murky business.
He’s learned how to crack the rituals and codes that govern village life — in the general store, where information is currency; in the pub, where he’s enjoying “the shove and jostle of being part of a group of guys”; and outdoors, where his neighbors work on plots of land their families have owned for generations. He’s now engaged to Lena, and they’ve formed a family of sorts with a local teenager, Trey Reddy.
Then tragedy strikes. It’s a small event, in the scheme of things, but it cracks open a fault line in the village. The lifeless body of a young woman — lovely Rachel Holohan, who was engaged to the obnoxious son of the even more obnoxious Tommy Moynihan, the richest and most powerful man in Ardnakelty — is found face down in the river, hours after she unexpectedly called on Lena, seeking advice.
Her death appears to be a suicide, but ominous whisperings of murder, and of a fledgling scheme that will permanently alter the village’s character, begin to circulate. Even Lena, who has spent a lifetime keeping her distance, is implicated.
If Cal has been reluctantly reeled in to all this intrigue, so have we. I would crawl across a field of glass to get my hands on a new Tana French book. (Sometimes, impatient for the next one, I go back and reread the old ones.) Still, I was reflexively disappointed when she abandoned her earlier series — six breathtakingly good mysteries featuring a roundelay of officers from the Dublin Murder Squad — and moved to the countryside.
But these books grow on you. They’re slower paced and more interior than conventional mysteries; much of the suspense arises from the nuances of small details. Conversations that seem like exchanges of pleasantries become masterly interrogation scenes.
Rumor here is a tactic strategically deployed — “one of Ardnakelty’s primary weapons, the glinting flip side of its dark silences” — and, as in classic westerns, justice is often dispensed outside the bounds of the law. In a character who rarely leaves home and who enjoys fiddling with a set of dominoes the way Madame Defarge enjoyed knitting, French has created one of the most terrifying villains in recent memory.
You don’t have to read the previous two books — “The Searcher” and “The Hunter” — to appreciate “The Keeper.” But if you start here, I bet that you’ll want to go back, if only for the chance to fill in the characters’ back stories and to luxuriate some more in French’s prose. Open this book to any page to see what I mean.
Here’s someone describing Rachel, before her death: “She looks like she popped out of Instagram by mistake and somebody should put her back in before she gets smudged.”
Here’s the moment that Lena realizes that she’s underestimated the danger she’s walked into. “She knows the shapes secrets take, around here,” French writes. “They’re dark and jagged, dense enough to wear a hole right through you, but they’re small, confined things; they lack scale. This has scale.”
The ending is immensely satisfying and deeply moving, especially if you love dogs.
THE KEEPER | By Tana French | Viking | 484 pp. | $32
Sarah Lyall is a writer at large for The Times, writing news, features and analysis across a wide range of sections.
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