Wednesday, September 12, 2018

The Witch Elm by Tana French


Something a bit different from the great Tana French.  Instead of following detectives of the Dublin Murder Squad, in The Witch Elm we have the perspective of the victims.  And perhaps the suspects (I'm still reading).  When some detectives do arrive, they sparkle.  I'm willing to say that no one writes a more captivating detective than she does.  (And the interrogations!  They remind me of the intensity of some of the scene in the box back on Homicide: Life on the Street, the great TV show.)

Normally I tear through every new book French writes but this time it has been slow going.  This book gets off to a slow start (it's good but it takes a long time to get to where we're going) and it's only at about the 33% mark that it starts to pick up speed.  (I am reading an advance digital copy and the formatting is terrible, one of my Kindles keeps starting me over every time, and the Adobe reader for iOS is perhaps the worst piece of software ever written.)  These technical glitches are breaking the spell that French normally puts one under.  But I can still tell The Witch Elm is magic.