The Hunter, by Tana French.

 

            Tana French – Thank you!  It’s about time that we had a sequel to ‘The Searcher’, her spellbinding story of seething, age-old enmities in the tiny village of Ardnakelty, new home of ex-Chicago detective Cal Hooper.  He has been a resident of the village for two years now and in that time has made some firm friends of the locals, has Lena, a ‘lady friend’ (a fact that the village rumour-mill reports on with all the alacrity of a Sunday tabloid), and a foster-daughter, Trey, to whom he is teaching his considerable knowledge of carpentry and furniture restoration.  Life is pretty damn fine, thank you – until a bad apple turns up to taint the barrel.

            Trey’s dad Johnny returns to Ardnakelty, much to the amazement and horror of his deserted wife and children, and Trey as the eldest, is furious that he can just swan back to his tumbledown home as though he’d never left, this time bringing a posh British mate with him, who is very fascinated with his Irish roots – ‘yes, his dear old Granny came from Ardnakelty, and with her she brought tales of Gold in Them Thar Hills’, and pretty soon Johnny has stirred up everyone with tales of gold-bearing seams on their farmland, if only they’d like to invest with him and his posh mate.  And people seem to fall for it, to Cal’s amazement – but as the weeks pass and Trey’s dad talks faster and faster with less success, the ugly side of Ardnakelty begins to reveal itself:  threats both veiled and plain are made if Johnny’s scheme doesn’t show a profit soon, but what’s most troubling to Cal is that Trey seems to be at the heart of them – on purpose. 

            It becomes very obvious that Trey wants her father gone – by any means necessary, and she’s smart enough to orchestrate proceedings:  Cal and Lena find that they have to get up awfully early in the morning to be ahead of her to avert a tragic outcome, for Ardnakelty is a pagan force unto itself;  old crimes and grudges are never forgotten and a 15 year-old must not be allowed to sacrifice herself on an altar of hatred and revenge.

            Ms French as always dazzles us all with her warts-and-all depictions of village life, her lyrical descriptions of breathtaking country, and her singular characters, from Bobby Feeney who believes in aliens to Mart Lavin, Cal’s neighbour who also seems to be the Ringmaster of Threatening Events:  someone does die, but the victim and killer are a complete surprise – as they should be.  And the Craic is first-class, so!  SIX STARS. 

 

 

Tom Lake, by Ann Patchett.

              Tom Lake is not a person, but a place – a place that was known as Tom’s Lake, until people’s love of abbreviation shortened it.  It was a small community on the northern shores of Lake Michigan, renowned for its summer stock performances, perfect venues for up-and-coming young actors to make their mark and go on to greater things – or fade out under the relentless competition.

            It’s also a place of memories, both wonderful and awful, as Lara Wilson works with her daughters picking cherries on their fruit farm forty years later;  they are all back home for the summer – and the pandemic:  the farm is horrendously short-staffed as all their usual pickers are in lockdown, and Lara’s beloved girls have all returned to spend lockdown with their parents, and are now demanding a story of Lara’s past, that summer she spent at Tom Lake starring – yes, STARRING! – in Our Town by Thornton Wilder opposite Peter Duke, now a world-famous movie and TV actor. The fact that she used to date him has been a never-ending source of delight to the girls, always up for a good story since childhood:  cherry-picking is hard, monotonous work and they need a diversion.

            And this story is indeed diverting.  Lara is a truthful woman and has censored very little in her retelling of her romance with Peter Duke, the Unknown Actor, for whom she fell so wildly in love at the age of twenty-four, ‘that it felt like falling off the roof at midnight.’  But she didn’t share everything with her curious girls, especially his desire to experience fully every sensation and emotion on offer, and his penchant for self-destruction – or the particularly cruel and casual end to their sizzling affair, or how the events at Tom Lake eventually put an end to her own nascent acting career.

            Ms Patchett has created an ode to love in all its forms noble and otherwise, with characters to match:  it was absurdly easy for this reader to fall under Peter Duke’s spell, and her lesser characters are little works of art.  A vein of humour flows through the drama like a welcome drink, and it was very hard to say goodbye to Lara and her lovely daughters – and Tom Lake.  SIX STARS.