January 19th, 2010
Patrick Burns: The Last Book I Loved, In The Woods
I’m not a fan of murder mysteries. Truth is, I just don’t care why someone murdered someone else. Plus there’s the violence (grisly), the sex (cop-on-cop, cop-on-suspect), the conventional motives (jealousy, insanity, payback for molestation), the handful of suspects (lover, neighbor, father), and the revelation that it was…whomever. I don’t care.
Perhaps, then, I’m exactly the kind of reader Tana French set out to pistol-whip when she wrote In the Woods. I’m the cocky, I’ve-seen-it-all snob, who looks down on “page-turners” like they’re the Doritos of literary cuisine, tasty yet empty.
Well, she got me. She got me good. And here’s how she did it. …more
