Piecing together twisty plot
The seventh book in crime novelist Tana French’s repertoire, The Wych Elm, is one with many twists and turns, a story where the reader does well to pay attention right to the very end. The Irish writer has departed from her highly successful Dublin Murder Squad series to create a standalone story set in that same city. The story is told not from the detectives’ viewpoint but the potential suspect, among others, of a terrible crime committed 10 years ago in the final summer three cousins spent at the family home, under the benign negligence of their Uncle Hugo, before they went off to college.
The Wych Elm has all the elements of a family saga: eccentric, now dying Uncle Hugo; the three cousins reunited over the tragedy of his illness at the family home, the Ivy House, and then circling each other when a gruesome crime is revealed which took place a decade ago.
Meanwhile, the aunts and uncles who surround them will do anything to keep the status quo and the family together.
The story is told by Toby Hennessy, one of the cousins, now in his late 20s. French adds to the tension by making him a highly unreliable narrator, attacked almost fatally early in the book, leaving him with physical injuries and a faulty memory with yawning gaps. As he struggles to piece together key events from a decade ago, the reader doesn’t know whether to believe him or not.
This once smooth young PR man, for whom life has always gone his way, is not always one you root for or trust but he is all the reader has to interpret the revelations that emerge during the investigation of the central crime.
As more is revealed about the main characters, it is clear why French has chosen to tell the story from the family’s viewpoint. Meanwhile, no background piece of information is wasted, so readers must stay alert to any seemingly random plot points French has laid out.
The detectives still play a key role in unravelling the mystery; they are adept at unsettling their subjects, always getting to the truth through, sometimes, underhand methods and careful timing, content to let their suspects stew at times. A riveting and unsettling read for any downtime you might have but set a couple of days aside. You won’t want to do anything else.