In the Woods is a 2007 mystery novel written by Tana French, and the first in her Dublin Murder Squad series.
The plot concerns itself with the murder of a 12 year old girl in Knockaree, a small town in Ireland. The book's protagonist, Adam "Rob" Ryan, is assigned to the case along with his partner and good friend, Cassie Maddox. Unbeknownst to anyone besides his partner, Rob was involved in an incident where he and two of his childhood friends, Peter and Jamie, went missing in the woods, with only himself being found and the two others still missing to the present day. Despite many attempts by the authorities at the time, the case was never solved and Rob can't remember anything about the event. Rob hopes he'll be able to solve both cases, though things end up being much more complicated than he first imagined...
Unmarked spoilers below.
Provides Examples Of:
- Awful Truth: Rosalind, Katy's older sister, is a psychopath who manipulated Damian into killing her out of spite and jealousy, and she had Rob fooled from the very beginning.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Rosalind pretends to be a sweet and sensitive girl who feels the need to play the part of parent to make up for her actual parents' deficiencies. Both Rob and Cassie suspect she may be a victim of abuse. However, it eventually turns out she's actually a complete psychopath; she was jealous and bitter about Katy's aptitude for ballet so she began poisoning her, and once Katy found out and defied her, Rosalind manipulated Damian Donnelly to kill her as revenge.
- Cain and Abel: Rosalind is abusive and controlling to Jessica and Katy, and eventually has the latter murdered when she tries to assert herself.
- Cowboy Cop: Rob dips into this at multiple points in the novel, but it's deconstructed. It either doesn't help the investigation or actively makes it worse, and it's made clear that ultimately Rob's own judgment is anything but perfect, given how he was fooled by Rosalind.
- Crapsack World: Everything that could have gone wrong, goes wrong, particularly pertaining to Rob, who in the end not only bungles the resolution of the case leading to him being demoted and unlikely to ever move up the ranks again, but loses his best friend and comes to the conclusion he isn't ever going to get the closure he wants to his childhood trauma.
- Da Chief: O'Kelly. He isn't a particularly nice man and has a sexist streak (disliking Cassie for being a woman), but he does allow Rob and Cassie to partner up despite their inexperience and Rob admits most of his decisions are pretty reasonable even if they aren't what he or Cassie would prefer.
- Downer Ending: A massive one. Because of Rob's many mistakes, they aren't able to charge Rosalind for Katie's murder despite them getting her confession on tape, with only Damian (who Rosalind manipulated into committing the murder) going to jail for it. Rob is put off Murder Squad and relegated to menial desk work for not revealing that he was Adam Ryan all along and potentially compromising the investigation, with it being very unlikely he'll ever be put back there. He loses his friendship with Cassie, who gets engaged to Sam and moves on without him despite his attempt to confess his feelings and patch things up. In addition, the truth behind Peter and Jamie's disappearance goes undiscovered, and Rob feels like he'll probably never be able to remember what happened that day by the end.
- Fatal Flaw: Rob's pride and overly high opinion of his own judgment leads him to divulge information to Rosalind that identifies him as Adam Ryan, and leads him to just take for granted that she's of legal age despite this not being the case. This not only leads to Rosalind getting away with the crime (her confession cannot be accepted due to being a minor), but also the dissolution of his partnership with Cassie, who moves on without him.
- Fat Bastard: Terrence Andrews is a self-centered, ostentatious businessman steeped in corruption who threatens Johnathan and his family over anonymous phone calls due to his financial interest in the Knockaree motorway. He's also a dick to his ex-wife, calling her for long periods of time to bask in self-pity and getting furious when she decides to hang up on him.
- Foreshadowing: Cassie mentions that she's good at recognizing psychopaths, having personally been a victim of one. That's why she doesn't trust Rosalind, and in the end she turns out to be right.
- It's All About Me: Rosalind (and Cathal Mills, Johnathan Devlin's childhood friend) doesn't care about anything other than herself, and basically sees other people as tools to use to get what she wants, or to discard when they no longer serve her purpose.
- Manchild: It's not immediately obvious, but it's clear that the trauma of whatever happened to Rob has stunted him emotionally. This is perhaps most apparent in how he deals with his relationship with Cassie towards the end of the book; sleeping with her seriously messes with him and ends up destroying their relationship, both personally and professionally, leaving him alone by the end of the book.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: A few points in the novel suggest a possible supernatural explanation to the children's disappearance in Knockaree, such as them being spirited away by The Fair Folk.
- Rape as Drama: Jonathan Devlin participated in the rape of Sandra Scully, his friend's girlfriend, when he was a teenager.
- Red Herring: The motorway and the corruption surrounding it seems like it could be important to the story and the characters (Sam especially) spend a lot of time trying to figure out who's behind it, but ultimately it has nothing to do with the murder. They do uncover some high-profile corruption, but for political reasons, they aren't able to do anything about it.
- The Profiler: Cassie fills in this role during the investigation due to her experience in psychology. She turns out to be pretty good at this, correctly guessing the true nature of both the perpetrator and the person who manipulated him into doing it.
- The Unreveal: Ultimately, the disappearance of Rob's childhood friends and Katy's murder are completely unrelated, and while the latter is solved, the former is not, and neither Rob nor the audience gets to discover what happened, with Rob flat out saying he likely will never remember what happened that day.
