mystery – Pop Culture Penguin

Review: The Hunter by Tana French

Tana French is an author I’m Very Normal about. I recommend her books to anyone who so much as hints they like mystery in my vicinity. I keep one of her books (Witch Elm) on my shelf, unread so I don’t have to face the feeling of running out of Tana French. Like I said, very logical behavior; I am Very Normal.

So, when I got The Hunter from Net Galley last week I definitely behaved Normally and didn’t, say, scream loudly on the sidewalk when the email came through on my lunch break walk, or bring my e-reader everywhere I went including the bar and my friend’s birthday party. Very. Normal.

Let me start this review with, if you haven’t read anything by Tana French, this shouldn’t be your first one. And if you haven’t read her most recent book, The Searcher, you shouldn’t read this one yet either. It’s a direct sequel, unlike Dublin Murder Squad, and it will spoil The Searcher. If you’re wondering what Dublin Murder Squad is read on, if you’re not, skip to the review.

Beginner’s guide to Tana French:

Tana French is an Irish author with two different series and one standalone novel. If you’re new here the best place to start is Dublin Murder Squad. That’s her first series and also, I would argue, her best. Start with either her first book, In the Woods or The Likeness (some people find In the Woods frustrating is the only reason I offer The Likeness as an alternative, but either will take you on a ride and you can’t really go wrong). After that, you can read around in basically any order. Each novel is about a detective on Dublin Murder Squad, so they are connected. Characters pop up in other character’s books and it’s fun to weave all the cameos together. My personal favorite is Faithful Place, but I do think that one is better if you’ve read The Likeness first.

Her most recent series, The Searcher, and now, The Hunter, is all about Cal Hooper, an American ex-cop from Chicago who goes to retire in small town in Ireland called Ardnakelty. It’s like an Irish western. A new sheriff blows in to a town that has a law all its own and a kid with a missing brother starts interrupting his peaceful battle with the land and the rooks (like a rough and tough version of Poirot and the vegetable marrows he’s always threatening to grow). You definitely could start with The Searcher if you wanted to, it has no connection to the others.

The Witch Elm is a standalone. From what people have told me, I wouldn’t start with this one, but I can’t really comment, I haven’t read it. For Normal Reasons, see above.

Whatever you choose, you’ve got some seriously great writing ahead of you and I am jealous that you get to experience it for the first time.

Yeah, yeah I know all that, tell me about The Hunter already (no spoilers for The Hunter, but since this does take place after The Searcher there might be some mild spoilers for that ahead):

The Hunter has all of the usual marks of a Tana French book. The prose is writers’-envy inducing as always. There are sentences of hers that I think I literally could not come up with in a million-trillion years (actually that’s, like, most of them). There are sentences that feel so intense it’s like they sprang out of the book and actually punched you in the gut. There are other sentences that are laugh out loud funny just when you least expect it. I won’t relay the rest of this joke so you can enjoy it for yourself, but one character calls the whole Ottoman Empire “some boyos” and I died laughing.

Her characters are, as ever, the star of the show. The events of The Hunter take place a couple years after the end of The Searcher. Cal, Trey and Lena are all in a really good place. Cal did adopt that dog! Trey has one, too! The dogs are friends and Trey is learning carpentry and getting good grades and Cal makes all three of them pizza. It’s adorable! If you’ve read even one Tana French book, you’ll know that “all the characters you like are doing really well” is a frightening and probably emotionally devastating place to start.

When I read Searcher, I think I was holding the fact that it isn’t Dublin Murder Squad against it. If I was ranking Tana French books (a challenge!) I would have put it near the bottom. I also don’t love westerns, which didn’t endear me to it. Still a really great book, not a favorite. For The Hunter, I was over that. Within five minutes of reading, I was struck by how much I like these characters. Cal is complex and way more than your cookie-cutter tough guy with a heart of gold. Trey only gets more and more fascinating as she gets older and Lena I just unapologetically like. She lives on her own terms with several dogs. I mean, what’s that if not living the dream? And the town of Ardnakelty is still at once picturesque and brutal. I forget a lot after I’m done with a book, and it took picking up the sequel for me to realize just how real these characters felt and still feel. I could jump right back in without needing to look up a summary of Searcher.

The delight in this book comes from Tana French’s particular gift for creating characters with their own goals and different lengths they’ll go to achieve them. It’s the cross purposes, the alliances and machinations that make this book fascinating and exciting to the very end. I really was not sure how it would end for most of the book. She has a particular gift for writing teenagers — as we know from Secret Place — and that’s on display here too, with Trey. You understand Trey and at the same time want to scream at her and also give her a big hug and tell her it’s okay to cry (except she’d hit you, probably).

At about 75% of the way in, I didn’t even really care about the mystery because I was so fascinated by what the characters were doing and how each person’s actions would have consequences for the others. (Don’t worry if you are here for the mystery, Tana French made me care about it again, a lot, very shortly after that).

This book earns every one of its five stars and at the end of the day I liked it more than I liked The Searcher. So even if that one wasn’t your favorite, I’d say give this one a chance.

Stopping Crimes in Darth Vader’s Bathroom: Finlay Donovan Knocks ‘Em Dead

Whenever there is a murder in Northern Virginia, Finlay Donovan will be there. Will she need to be there? No, absolutely not. But she will anyway. On the off chance that she’s busy with her kids that night, she will certainly find the body later.

Finlay Donovan is a divorced mother of two, a novelist, and on occasion gets hired as a contract killer. The first book, Finlay Donovan is Killing It, is a lighthearted, funny murder mystery with a criminally likable protagonist. The second book is more of the same, for better and for worse.

The second book takes place just about a month after the events of the first one. The Russian Mob is at it again (they always are) and someone is trying hire a hitman to kill her dirtbag ex-husband. Despite my protestations of “oh, just let them,” Finlay is intent on stopping the contract killer and writing a followup to her next book before her agent contract kills her.

Vero is still helping with the kids as a live-in babysitter, is still getting into constant car trouble, usually involving dead bodies and still is the funniest character in these books.

If you liked the first one you will probably also like this one; it’s more of the same. The sense of humor is the same, the plot is very similar and there are some absolutely hilarious one liners (my favorite involves the interior of a sports car being compared to Darth Vader’s bathroom). That said, I found myself thinking that she really did not need to be involved in most of the stuff she gets into. She keeps justifying her involvement by trying to cover up what happened in book one. But in doing so, she gets herself involved in all new crimes and makes it much more likely that she’ll be found out.

The sheer number of dumb choices just absolutely skyrockets. I spent way more time screaming at Finlay in this book than I did in the first one and her likability suffered a little. The most egregious doesn’t even have to do with murder. Very early on in the book, Vero, ostensibly her accountant, says they don’t have money repeatedly when they should. Its blindingly obvious that something happened and Vero lost at least a chunk of their money. Finlay completely ignores these warnings multiple times and just doesn’t seem to care for most of the book? Which is wild since money problems were what got her into this mess in the last book. You think she’d ask some follow up questions sooner than 80% into the novel.

Now, I did read these back to back so this might not be a problem for you if you’ve had more time in between. I think this is not a series you binge; it benefits from time between books.

I do have a couple of annoyances that reading them farther apart would not solve. I think I’m supposed to be rooting for Finlay to end up with Nick the cop. Nick the cop strikes me as a creep. I think I am supposed to think he’s sweet and stable and good for her, but he also has some really piss poor judgement (Finlay has enough of that on her own) and the book makes it clear he’s constantly looking at her boobs. There’s one point where the cops get called for a break in at Finlay’s house. She just stepped out of the shower and is wearing only a towel. Nick responds to the break in call and is roaming around her house with his gun drawn and finds Finlay, who is completely unaware of the potential break-in. He looks her up and down in the towel before going “oh right, I have my gun out and am supposed to be figuring out if there’s a murderer in here.” She got out of the bathroom and was confronted by police in her apartment with weapons drawn. Is this really the time? It just doesn’t sit right with me.

Also with the sheer number of murders and police matters she inserts herself into, it’s hard not to think of Finlay as the epitome of white privilege, something I’m certain this series does not want to tackle.

I also should warn people (no spoilers, don’t worry) that the ending of this book does not tie up neatly: they’re really gunning to set up book three. You don’t find out everything about the mystery of who’s trying to kill her ex-husband and what we do find out is…underwhelming. If that annoys you, maybe wait for book 3.

I got this as an audiobook and I think that’s a great format for this story. The narrator is great (the kids voices are so realistic I wondered if they used actual children) and it’s the kind of story where if you miss a little, you’ll catch up really quickly.

Note: I got this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Who is this for: Stressed out moms, cozy mystery enthusiasts people who want a little murder with their romance.

Pairs well with: A glass of cheap Chardonnay and a true crime documentary.

The Delicious and Dangerous World of “Velvet was the Night”

Noir is one of my favorite genres by far so when I saw Silvia Moreno-Garcia had written one (I throughly enjoyed Mexican Gothic), I got it the week it came out back in August. Of course, that means that I am just now getting around to reading it in January.

Noir is a genre with an extremely set and recognizable set of tropes. I find this sometimes makes really original noir hard to come by. But the very best contemporary noir figures out how to re-shape the classic elements of noir—the femme fatale, the mean streets, the hard-boiled detective—into something recognizable but distinctly different.

Where Velvet Was the Night really separates itself from the pack is the setting. Moreno-Garcia drops us in Mexico in the 1970s. The government sees communist sympathies as a threat to be squashed, and have hired a group of thugs called the Hawks to do the squashing. The Hawks were specifically sent after leftist students and took care to also quiet any journalists that got wind of the violence. They’d also go after journalists, smash their cameras, and destroy all the evidence. The very first page of this book is an actual telegram sent by the U.S. Department of State in 1971 acknowledging the existence of the Hawks. “It is well established,” the telegram says, “that the Hawks are an officially financed, organized, trained and armed repressive group.”

I never learned much about Mexico’s history. It was somehow not really covered by my high school “Modern World History” class (Europe, I of course learned about at length). I never realized Mexico’s government also took a strong and violent stand against leftists and this book inspired me to learn a little more about that history.

It truly is a great place for noir. You have a violent, government backed, and powerful group of gangsters that has a city full of students in a chokehold. At the same time, members of the Hawks are starting to realize that they’re on the way out; They might not always have the government’s favor. That makes for interesting internal dynamics as well. We get to see this play out through Elvis, a Hawk who really likes that old time rock ‘n’ roll and doesn’t really enjoy murder. Not enough to—you know—not kill people, but hey. By Hawk standards, he’s practically a teddy bear.

And at the center of it all we have a quintessential noir protagonist, Maite. Maite is bored and unhappy. Her job is going nowhere, her sister overshadows her (even on Maite’s own birthday), her love life has stalled out, her car literally stalled out, and money is tight. (Content warning: Maite also has a lot of disparaging thoughts about her body as well, heads up). She escapes all of this by reading soap opera-y comics full of romance and danger. She’s desperate for money for her car, there’s not much in her normal life that appeals to her, and she has a habit of stealing things because she can (unclear if this is just full blown, “fuck it” recklessness or kleptomania). In short, she’s a character made for trouble. And this is a noir so trouble, of course, finds her.

The other place where I think Velvet was the Night stands apart from a typical noir is the MacGuffin. Normally, I don’t really care about the MacGuffin. Obviously, I mean, this is why the term MacGuffin was created. It doesn’t matter what it is, it just matters that the characters want it. In this case the MacGuffin is film containing pictures of the Hawks bloodying up students. It’s the only surviving shred of evidence from a deadly attack. I found myself desperately wanting the film to fall into the hands of someone who could publish it and show the public exactly what the government was doing. Those stakes made it easy to get invested in the drama surrounding Maite, even when Maite herself just wants to get her catsitting money from her neighbor and have no more to do with the whole thing.

Some noir stories are intense mysteries with twists and turns (the Maltese Falcon kind) while others are like watching a train wreck happen in slow motion, knowing there’s going to be a crash (The Double Indemnity kind). I argue this is the latter. There is some mystery, but if you read mysteries regularly you will almost certainly be able to guess the end—and that’s okay. Trying to trick you doesn’t seem like the goal here; it’s all about watching this evil the Mexican government unleashed ripple through the lives of not just the intended targets, but the people around the targets who get sucked into danger like water down a drain. (Look, I had to do one corny noir metaphor. Just be glad I restrained myself until now).

Just like with Mexican Gothic, this is Silvia Moreno-Garcia showing off her mastery of genre fiction. There’s prose you don’t want to miss a word of, and a truly delightful playlist in the back. (There’s some Spanish rock ‘n’ roll on there I really like and would never have found without this book).

This book is for you if you like black and white movies—the more Bogart the better. If books with Spotify playlists in the back give you joy. If thinking about HUAC makes your blood boil. Or if sometimes you sneak a little Elvis into your shuffle.

Pairs well with: Sitting by the AC in the dog days of summer, an old fashioned with extra ice, and killing time while waiting for your car to get repaired.