The Searcher

Rating: 5 / 5 🌟

Tana doesn’t need the Dublin Murder Squad to write a good book! This feels (and was intended to be) like a Western set in Ireland. The cowboy, Cal Hooper, is a former Chicago cop who retires to the countryside for quiet but doesn’t find it. You learn bits of what drove Cal out of the force and how he perceives systemic racism in policing but only 1 or 2 pages on the topic.

A small detail to capture what I love about Tana’s writing: the rooks on Cal’s land are almost elevated to characters, a remix on a Greek chorus. They are standoffish and insult him, they ignore him or make fun when he hurts himself. They aren’t a big part of the story but the detail helps to build out the environment, especially when there’s only one neighbor near enough to stop by.