In the Woods

Detectives Robert Ryan and Cassie Maddox have been called out to an archeological site where the body of a young girl has been found.  It is a place which has memories for Ryan.  It was here that something happened to him and two of his friends.  His memory won't let him know what happened, and his two friends disappeared at the time.

It doesn't take long for the body to be identified.  When Ryan and Maddox speak to the family, they learn that the father of the girl had been supporting a cause to prevent a highway from being built over the archeological site.  He had also received threatening phone calls from an unknown man, who said he knew where they lived.  Ryan and Maddox wonder about the females in the family.  Why had the victim been sick for so long; why was her twin nothing but skin and bones; why was their older sister trying to be older than she is and why was the mother so quiet?

A hair clip found at the scene matches one from the cold case involving Ryan.  The pair get Sam O'Neill as a third on their team, plus several others to do the leg work.  Ryan gets a possible break when the twin sister of the victim tells him that the pair had been approached by a man a week before the killing.

Sam discovers a reporter who had researched the building of the highway and who was behind it.  He had been told to stop any further research.  However, he was able to surreptitiously provide Sam with the names of the three men behind it.  Are they possibly connected to the killing?

Can the three detectives solve the case based on the limited information that they have gleaned or will they get a break?  Author Tana French's first murder mystery is full of tough mysteries that seem so tangled for the detectives that it does their heads in. Although the book got off to a slow start and I was wondering what I had gotten myself into, I found the book hard to put down.  A very good read.