The Hunter A Novel

This is the second book in this series. Retired Detective Cal Hooper is settling in just fine. His arrangement with Trey has built up their furniture repair/building business is going well. And it is helping build her self confidence. Until her dad shows up with tails of gold. And his “patsy” English friend comes after. Johnny Reddy convinces all the blokes in the county to pool some money to seed gold in the river. He even ropes Trey into helping him. But she has her own agenda. Can Cal protect Trey as the scheme unravels? Will she let him? What will happen to the rest of the Reddy family? And there are plenty of surprises for Cal’s love life. This is a complex story of rural Irish living. The family that you grow up with and the one you choose. There is a lot of danger, drinking, swearing and edge of your seat intrigue.The audiobook is narrated by Roger Clark. His talent for accents and voices completely immersed me in the story.

From the first Tana French mystery, I have been hooked. Her characters are complicated humans that I am fascinated by. They are interesting because they have two minds about solutions to their problems. In The Hunter, Cal, the American transplanted to a small Irish village is at a loss as to how to deal with the difficult teenage girl he has taken under his wing to tame and civilize. The villagers, with their circular thinking, hidden motives, and generational secrets, drive him to distraction.The girl, Trey, is both pleased and horrified that her neglectful father has returned to pull a scam on the town. If she helps him, she will get a measure of vengeance on those who she believes killed her older brother. By doing so, she allows him to stay long enough to break the hearts of the younger children when he leaves again.Cal’s woman friend is in turmoil as she watches the situation. Lena is concerned for Cal, Trey, Trey’s mom, and for the powder keg the town has become. As the scam takes hold, she is at odds trying to decide whether to use her influence. The town is a boiling kettle of secrets, gossip, subterfuge, and revenge, bound to boil over to scald innocent and guilty alike.The plot thickens from here but in French’s hands, the reader is led through the tangled web to a satisfying conclusion that makes sense without ridiculous drama or premature revelation. She has a firm grip on her story and brings her reader to the conclusion with the satisfaction we expect from a writer of her skill.If you haven’t read Tana French before, start with her first book, read all the rest, and follow her so you will know when the next is due to come out. French fans follow faithfully.This is the second book about Cal and Trey. Read the first one (The Trespasser, I think) before The Hunter to understand Trey’s motivations. As I recall, all the other books are stand-alones, though characters in the Dublin Murder Squad, a police procedural series, pop up in several books.

Tana French has outdone herself with ‘The Hunter’, a follow-up to ‘The Searcher’. Despite being a follow-up, it can be readily enjoyed as a stand-alone. The novel takes place in the village of Ardnakelty in western Ireland. It is an unusually hot summer and there has been no rain for weeks. Everyone is restless.Cal Hooper, a retired Chicago detective, has chosen Ardnakelty for his retirement years. He is still very emotionally connected to Trey Reddy who is now a teenager, and he is continuing his affair with Lena, a local widow. Trey and Cal have a woodworking business and take commissions for furniture.The town is so small that everyone is aware of everyone else’s business.Arriving unexpectedly in Ardnakelty is Johnny Reddy, Trey’s long-absent n’eer-do-well father. His story is that he’s been hobnobbing with the rich and famous in London but everyone knows that Johnny’s stories can’t be taken at face value. Interestingly, a London friend of Johnny’s accompanies him to Ardnakelty. According to Johnny, his friend is a millionaire and has a gold mining proposition for the townsmen. He knows where there is gold because his grandmother hailed from this village and told him just where to dig. For just a small investment, each man can become rich. Gold fever and greed take over despite reservations about the accuracy of this stranger’s plan.Meanwhile, Trey is seeking revenge for the ‘disappearance’ of her brother who she believes was murdered by some local men. She concocts a story that she believes will out her brother’s murderers and distances herself from Cal and Lena.This is a literary novel that happens to include a murder. The characterizations and narrative are so engaging that I had trouble putting the book down. Ms. French’s attunement to the ambience of Ardnakelty and her perspicacity in drawing the characters is stunning. The slow burning and langourous feeling of the book provides a sense of what it’s like to be in Ardnakelty. I felt like I was living there myself. I highly recommend this novel to all readers who enjoy literary fiction spiced with a bit of intrigue.

Tana French’s _The Hunter_ continues with Cal Hooper from her earlier _The Searcher_. While not a necessity, I recommend reading that first, as there are allusions and some back-story relevant to the plot in _The Hunter_. Here, ex-pat and retired Chicago detective Hooper, still somewhat of an outsider in a tiny west-Irish village continues his mentoring a half-feral Trey from the other side of the tracks and building relationships with the locals and is gradually becoming accepted into the insular community. That is until Trey’s father, a conman who years before abandoned Trey and her family returns with an apparent mark seeking gold in the mountains nearby. The village sees an opportunity for quick riches, buying into the con. Trey sees an opportunity to even the score with both her Dad and the village who has done her wrong – and Cal is caught in the middle.French is a talented writer, capturing hidden meanings between locals that Cal may – or may not – miss, drawing compelling, complicated characters readers will genuinely care about in a complicated weaving motives of revenge, manipulation and justice, tightly pulled together with unexpected results that are sure to both surprise and thrill. Enthusiastically recommended.

Lately I have read several books that I was impatient to get to the end of. Not the case with this one. Instead, I wanted to live in that world with these characters for a while longer. Like a television series, I wanted more.The setting is a remote village in Ireland called Ardnakelty. French is a master at creating believable, somewhat flawed characters. In this novel we have Trey (for Teresa), a fifteen-year-old girl who has taken up woodworking with Cal Hooper, ex-cop from Chicago, who moved to the village two years before. Cal has an interest in Lena, who has lived here all her life (but doesn’t quite fit in nevertheless). Cal and Lena have made it their unspoken mission to bring out the best in Trey, who resists.Trey makes her own rules but has a sense of responsibility toward her family. Most of it anyway. When her father returns home after some years she is wary, however. He tends to take and run, and this time he comes with a scheme to dig up gold in the area, financed by some rich Londoner who arrives a few days later. Trey has no use for him until she sees that he might play a part in a revenge scheme.Belonging is everything to this little village. Cal is still a newcomer, although he has won a lot of friends by his furniture making and repairing. Lena sets herself apart, doesn’t join in the town gossip, leaves that to her sister. Trey is generally accepted, but when she is connected to her no-good father some people are willing to dismiss her.All of this is a setup for a sudden death. The Garda move in. Cal tries to stay on the sidelines – “it’s nothing to do with me” – but when events threaten Trey’s life in the town he has to make some moves.A thoroughly enjoyable trip for me. I’m wondering where that name comes from – Ardnakelty. There has to be a story.