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I thought I was a Tana French completist until I sat down to write this essay.
Yet somehow Id missedBroken Harbor(2012), the fourth in the popular detective series.
The oversight turned out to be a monumental blessing.
Even before readingBroken Harbor, I already knew French was the best writer working in the genre.
Thats the thing about her.
She puts out enough copy (seven novels in 12 years) to accrue followers in droves.
The predictable horror of a mystery novel can be soothing.
How laconically can he mope about the countryside now?
How many more concussions can one civil servant stand?
Their moods and tics are iterated to the point of automation.
The detachment of Dashiell Hammetts Sam Spade.
The chess moves of Raymond Chandlers Philip Marlowe.
Miss Marples penchant for irritating the hell out of everyone with whom she comes into contact.
Henning Mankells psychologically cauterized Kurt Wallander even makes coffee sadly.
Among contemporary mystery writers, Rendell had Wexford, Lippman has Tess Monaghan.
Martin than an Agatha Christie, minus the beheadings (so far).
By the end of the novel, Ryan is suspended and his career is disemboweled.
InThe Secret Place, Mackey reappears but as a father and in a much more restrained role.
The further Frenchs Dublin stories unspool, the more they become detective adjacent.
In a literary scene bursting with thrillers hovering around the same banal question Is anyone really who they seem?
French shrugs and instead wonders how anyone can ever know anything about themselves.
Right now, on TV and everywhere else, heroes and antiheroes alike outstay their welcomes.
Frenchs most brilliant murders are perpetrated against her darlings.
In her latest act,The Witch Elm, French goes even further.
The best detective-fiction novelist out there doesnt think we even need the sleuths anymore.
I hadnt guessed the ending, though in hindsight it didnt surprise me.
