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Life
Grew up in Ireland, Italy, the USA, and Malawi; born of Irish, American and Italian ancestry incl. a Russian emigré countess who settled in Ethiopia; father with World Bank and FAO; has lived in Ireland since 1990; trained as an actress at Trinity College, Dublin, and has worked in theatre, film and voiceover; ed. TCD (drama) and worked as an actress in theatre, film and voice-over; issued In the Woods (2007), the first of her crime-thrillers involving an Irish policewoman detective Cassie Maddox, concerning child-murders and a survivor’s efforts to solve them, leading to near-death at the hands of a psychopath; winner of the Edgar Award for Best First Novel (USA), and also the Macavity, Barry and Anthony awards (USA);
issued The Likeness (2008), in which Maddox is faced with the murder of her doppleganger; nominated for the Hughes & Hughes Best Novel of the Year Award, 2009; now working on a novel centred on Cassie’s boss, a male police character; she is published by Viking in America; also Faithful Place (2010), Broken Harbour (2012) and The Secret Place (2014) - in the last of which the narrator is a character from the first; The Trespasser () and The Witch Elm ().; winner of awards including the Edgar, Anthony, Macavity, and Barry awards, the Los Angeles Times Award for Best Mystery/Thriller, and the Irish Book Award for Crime Fiction; her 2020 novel The Searcher has been called ‘Completely, indescribably magnificent’ by Stephen King; she lives in Dublin with her family.
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Works
In the Woods (London: Hodder & Stoughton 2007), 485pp., and The Likeness (Dublin: Hachette 2008), 696pp.; Faithful Place (London: Hodder & Stoughton 2010), 448pp.; Broken Harbour (London: Hodder & Stoughton 2012), 496pp.; The Trespasser (2016);The Secret Place: [Dublin Murder Squad] (London: Hodder & Stoughton 2014), 496pp.; The Wych Elm (Harmonsworth: Penguin Books 2019), 528pp.; The Searcher (Harmonsworth: Penguin 2020),. [All in Dublin Murder Squad ser.; num. Hachette Ireland reprints.]
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Tana French website - online [note distinct UK and USA pages]. See also Goodread review [incls. video] - online (14.09.2008; & ditto on YouTube]
See also Declan Burke, review of The Secret Place, in The Irish Times (6 Sept. 2014) [Weekend Review]
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Notes
In the Woods (2007) - publisher’s note in COPAC: ‘When he was twelve years old, Adam Ryan went playing in the woods one day with his two best friends [Peter and Jamie]. He never saw them again. Their bodies were never found, and Adam himself was discovered with his back pressed against an oak tree and his shoes filled with blood. He had no memory of what had happened. Twenty years on, Rob Ryan - the child who came back - is a detective in the Dublin police force. He’s changed his name [to Cassie Madison]. No one knows about his past. Then a little girl’s body is found at the site of the old tragedy and Rob is drawn back into the mystery. Knowing that he would be thrown off the case if his past were revealed, Rob takes a fateful decision to keep quiet but hope that he might also solve the twenty-year-old mystery of the woods.’ [Online at 14.09.2008]
The Likeness (2008): Still traumatised by her brush with a psychopath, Detective Cassie Maddox transfers out of the Murder squad and starts a relationship with fellow detective Sam O’ Neill. When he calls her to the scene of his new case, she is shocked to find that the murdered girl is her doppelgänger called Lexie Madison, a name Cassie formerly used when working undercover. To tempt the killer out of hiding, Cassie goes undercover, adopting the the dead girl’s identity and living her life Cassie is sent in her place - resulting in a dramatic denouément. (See Irish Literary Book Awards notice [online; 07.08.2009]; also Books Ireland, “First Flush”, Sept. 2008, p.199.)
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