Read by Roger Clark
16 hours, 24 minutes
Published March 2024 by Penguin Publishing Group
Publisher's Summary:
It's a blazing summer when two men arrive in a small village in the West of Ireland. One of them is coming home. Both of them are coming to get rich. One of them is coming to die.
Cal Hooper took early retirement from Chicago PD and moved to rural Ireland looking for peace. He's found it, more or less: he's built a relationship with a local woman, Lena, and he's gradually turning Trey Reddy from a half-feral teenager into a good kid going good places. But then Trey's long-absent father reappears, bringing along an English millionaire and a scheme to find gold in the townland, and suddenly everything the three of them have been building is under threat. Cal and Lena are both ready to do whatever it takes to protect Trey, but Trey doesn't want protecting. What she wants is revenge.
My Thoughts:
Tana French is one of the author's whose books I will pick up without having the slightest idea what they are about. I read all six of the books in her Dublin Murder Squad series and there wasn't a weak link in the bunch. Five years ago she introduced us to Cal Hooper in The Searcher; I was so excited to find that she was writing a second book about Cal and couldn't wait to get my hands on this one. And now I'm crossing my fingers that this is not just a two book series. I'm looking this series as much as I did the Dublin Murder Squad series; possibly even more.
I was recently trying to describe this book to someone, to put it into a neat genre. But it's not a book that easily falls into any one genre. Yes, there is a murder...eventually. It's a bit of a Western (and it is set in western Ireland)...there's even a bit of a gold rush. I suppose it could be characterized as a crime novel, there's plenty of crime to be had in it. But it's far more about its characters and their relationships and an exploration of the grey areas between good and bad.
It's a slow build of a book, but I was perfectly fine with that as we are reintroduced to the inhabitants of Ardnakelty, with all of their eccentricities, humor and long history. Relationships deepen and change. Hidden agendas are uncovered, motives revealed. Ardnakelty is much like a family - they can tease and hold grudges amongst themselves, but outsiders beware. More than two years after he's arrived, Cal is still something of an outsider, which is fine with him. As a former police officer, he struggles with the law of the land he now calls home. But in protecting Trey, and the others in the community he has grown fond of, he has to learn that sometimes things aren't just black and white.
This one will still be on my best-of list at the end of the year, both as a novel and as a audiobook. Roger Clark does an incredible job. Clark is an Irish-American actor who easily handles the different accents and the storytelling.
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