THE DATE: 10/19/08
THE LOCALE: REDBONES, SACCO BOWL, SLIGO'S
SCORP APPROVED? NOPE!
Read the first 9 pages and you will be thinking to yourself, "Holy monkey of Mary, this is going to be awesome". Set in the hills of Devlin, Ireland, a young kid is found stranded, desolate and incoherent, standing in nothing but his shoes which are also filled with blood. What happened? No one knew. I was intrigued.
Well, I'll tell you want happened... The next 250 pages are nothing more than a cliché' murder mystery filled with rounded plot twists, boring love affairs and a "really, that's it?" ending. Despite winning some second class, Palin-esque literary award, In the Woods by Tana French simply doesn't pass the SCORP test of strength. The murder suspects are losers, nobody is particularly tough, the primary murder is resolved with some random discoveries and the underlying original murder (connected to the kid standing in the woods) is technically not resolved. Sure, (spoiler alert) Ryan (the boy standing in bloody shoes) may have been the original murderer, but you'll be so bored by this point that you won't even care. Way to throw a random sasquatch reference in there as well Tana and never explain it.
In the Woods won an Edgar award, which I assume is the equivalent of getting a smiley face on your 3rd grade report card for getting through a book that doesn't have pictures. French is so proud of the "research" she performed in order to accurately represent how detectives in Ireland (do not) operate that she actually pats herself on the back in her acknowledgements. So my question is, if French performed so much research and won a literary award, how is it possible that she didn't even make a Kevin Costner-in-Robin Hood-Terrible Accent-attempt to represent the Irish brogue? French even went as far as to make Ryan English-educated in order to avoid having to attempt to include accurate language nuances and just sweep that minor detail under the rug. Weak... so effing weak.
Limiting my rant, I will call out a few SCORP-approved elements of In the Woods.
1) Ryan follows SCORP Rule #254 and sleeps with his work colleague - Detective Maddox. Maddox is basically the literally equivalent of the female cop in Dexter. Kind of hot, a terrible actress, acts like she is tough and deals with Ryan's annoying habits and attitude. She's a 6 and Scorps approve of all love affairs with 4 and aboves. (Note: If they have a tail - see Geek Love - 3s are acceptable).
2) Ryan is a functioning alcoholic - which is cool.
3) The first 9 pages really are great