Of course, anyone who knows the mystery genre could guess that Toby was going to find himself caught up in the skull mystery, but the way in which French gets us there is so masterful that it’s something of a mystery in and of itself. This is where the real mystery begins: a human skull is discovered in the large witch elm in Hugo’s backyard, police are called, detectives are afoot, and soon the mystery finds itself entwined with Toby’s own personal history.
But this is not luck as Toby knows it: how lucky can he be to have a brain that stutters and stops whenever it feels like it, to be mastered by something so completely out of his hands? Full of self-pity and frustration, Toby lets himself be convinced by his cousin Susanna to move in to their ancestral home with their uncle Hugo, who was recently diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor. Before the attack, Toby considered himself a pretty lucky guy (great girlfriend, great job, great apartment, the list is goes on), and even after the attack, doctors tell him he’s lucky to have survived with just a skull fracture and some brain injuries. The Witch Elm pushes the boundaries of crime fiction to something much more tantalizing: the thrill of the mystery comes not only from plot but from the moves French makes to tangle up expectations about narration.įrench places us in the first person narration of Toby Hennessy, who is brutally attacked in his own home and left for dead by the end of the first chapter. But the more exciting novelty comes from French’s ability to provide an entertaining novel that fulfills all genre expectations and offers up serious musings about the role of identity in our society. The Witch Elm is her first stand-alone novel since her debut in 2007 and shifts focus from crime fighters to crime victim. Mystery novelist Tana French is no exception to this rule, but in The Witch Elm she has provided readers with something that feels quite new.įor old fans, the newness might be attached to her departure from the Dublin Mystery Squad series.
In a tense, concentrated form, mysteries give writers the perfect excuse to look beyond the illusions of an orderly reality and, by following a determined system, can gracefully and entertainingly peel back layers of deception to find real revelations about our lives and ourselves.
Crime novels are often just entry points to examining culture and society.
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