I'm trying to remember how exactly this book came on my radar. I'm not quite sure, but I'm fairly certain that I was reading a New York Times article listing some of the best mysteries that were recently released, and this came up. I'm not sure I would've found In the Woods otherwise, but I think I'm fairly happy I did.
When I think back about the books that I read or look back at my reviews, it's rare that I have a purely mystery focused book; but that's what this is. The Irish author, I believe, has a number of mystery books called The Dublin murder squad, and I think this was the first one. Either way, it really is a pure mystery novel with a "whodunnit" murder.
The book is about 450 pages long and felt mostly too long with a couple of bright parts where it really hit it's stride. Like a lot of the books I read, I found the first part to be really exciting, and the ending to be pretty interesting, but this one really slowed in the middle. In some ways, I'm wondering if the author was trying to make it feel like the investigation, as the investigation took a long long time as well, so the reader perhaps felt what it was like to be one of the detectives. Speaking of, the two main characters are a male and female detective team who are young, and one of them has a secret that is connected to the murder.
I did find the book pretty interesting, and was certainly curious about who the murderer might be. As a warning, the book is quite specific in some of its details, and is what I would call a gritty, dark book in many ways. I'm not sure if it's because there are the author was Irish, but there were certain parts of the writing that I found odd or just I couldn't quite follow what she was trying to say. It was sort of bizarre because I found most of the book actually written quite well, other than these rare parts.
Three stars feels right for this book, as I was fairly entertained during much of it, but didn't feel quite satisfied at the end. I thought the premise was, in many ways, the best part. I did learn there was a miniseries made, and I watched a few episodes of that and couldn't quite get through it. Besides being 10 one-hour episodes, it reminded me of the book and that I got to the middle part pretty quickly and just realized it was far too slow and I already knew the ending (which was perhaps the best part).
Ultimately, I understand why the New York Times included it as one of the best mysteries. I think it's hard to find good mystery novels that truly captivate and hold the reader, and I will say that this one felt about as realistic as it could be about two detectives truly investigating a child's murder. I think if you're into murder mysteries, you probably could do a lot worse than this, though just temper expectations as I wasn't blown off the page at any point.
