Infinite Books

“The Keeper” by Tana French is my first encounter with this author’s work.  The story takes place in a remote Irish village called Ardnakelty. The seemingly peaceful life of its residents is suddenly disturbed when the body of a young girl, Rachel,  is discovered in the river. She was the fiancée of a young son of a local, influential, and wealthy entrepreneur. Everybody is shocked.

In Ardnakelty, the local pub has always been a hub where men exchange their suspicions and theories. Similarly, women gather at a town shop not just to buy eggs, but also to exchange gossip. For me, the parts that described those gatherings were the best part of the story. The writing felt very authentic, using local dialect and expressions to create a dark sense that something is brewing beneath the surface. Old grudges resurface, and the village is divided. Most people believe the local businessman is behind the crime. Others, possibly bought by the rich man, try to prove that someone else killed Rachel. Cal Hooper, a retired Chicago cop who now works as a woodworker and repairman, tries to solve the mystery. At the same time, Lena, his girlfriend, pushes past her antisocial nature to talk to women and understand why Rachel visited them earlier on the day she died.

This is a slow-moving mystery with great character development. The people are real, tough, but also unsure. More than just solving the crime is at stake: the community is fighting to keep the neighborhood close-knit and to resist being turned into another bland development or an expanse of industrial farms. The village is on the brink of disappearing altogether. As one villager says, “Mosta the hedgegrows’ll haveta go, as well – some a them are here since the Stone Age, didja know that? (…) The houses’ll be bought up with the land, and people moved into nice new estates named after the developers.”

I plan to read the first and second parts of this series, since my first Tana French novel was so much more than a typical mystery.

THE KEEPER by Tana French, published by Viking 2026