In the Woods by Tana French

In the Woods, Tana French’s first novel, is intelligent, skillfully plotted, vocabulary rich, and engaging.  As Cassie and Rob question people, check out alibis, spend time in the woods and follow up on leads, their friendship moves over the line into romance. Fellow investigator and sidekick Sam is the first to notice. It turns out badly, mixing business with love, especially after Rob thought this: “Think of the first time you slept with someone, or the first time you fell in love; that blinding explosion that left you cracking to the fingertips with electricity, initiated and transformed. I tell you that was nothing, nothing at all, beside the power of putting your lives, simply and daily, into each other’s hands.” As the murder case draws to its conclusion, we begin to understand more of what happened to Rob as a kid when his friends were killed—he was fat, couldn’t run fast enough, and “Whoever or whatever took Peter and Jamie away, it decided I wasn’t good enough.”