More tales of Ardnakelty

The first thing any Tana French fans would want to know is: Did you love this book?? The answer is a resounding, YES! Yes, I loved it, devoured it, enjoyed myself hugely reading it. But it is not without its imperfections, small though those are. However, on balance, it was a joy – as so many Tana French novels have been.

The Hunter is a sequel to French’s penultimate novel, The Searcher, (2020) featuring one Chicago ex-cop, Cal Hooper, who is looking for peace and quiet after retirement, and so comes to the remote, rural Irish village on the mountainside, called Ardnakelty. Quick recap: the other protagonist of The Searcher is young teenager, Trey (Theresa) from the much scorned Reddy family, whose elder brother Brendan had gone missing. Trey steels herself to get Cal Hooper to help her find Brendan, and in the course of unravelling that mystery, Cal and Trey become firm friends, and they both acquire pet dogs from Lena Dunne, one of the old timers in Ardnakelty.

When The Hunter commences, all the old cast are back: Trey with Banjo the dog at her heels, Cal with Rip and also with Lena as his lover. Mart the bored and over chatty neighbour still being held at arm’s length by Cal. Trey has settled down to learning carpentry and working with Cal to restore furniture, and all is happy on their mountainside. Then along saunters in Johnny Reddy, Trey’s absent father, who has apparently returned from London and just walks back into his wife’s house and his family’s lives.

’My mam coulda told him to fuck off,’ she [Trey] says.

‘She’d have had every right to,’ Lena agrees. ‘I wouldn’t say he gave her a chance, but. I’d say he showed up on the doorstep with a big smile and a big kiss, and waltzed inside before she could gey her bearings. By the time she’d her head together it was too late’ (p18).

Lena also notes that when Johnny comes round the next day to see Lena, his hair is not cut properly, and knowing Johnny likes to look good, she understands at once he must have left town wherever he had come from, in a hurry, and therefore, likely was running from some trouble.

Astute Lena is spot on, and Johnny brings with him a scam idea involving a rich English friend and gold mining, and ropes in all the key farmers of Ardnakelty. Since Johnny is hardly respected in his hometown, his first job is to stage a performance which intrigues these suspicious, untrusting farmer neighbours of his, and reel them into his scheme/plan. This is where we see Tana French come into her own with the deftest of plotting, with layers upon layers of mistrust, double crossings, double dealings, etc. We soon find out the rich Englishman is not a credulous fool who romanticises all things Irish, but a dangerous character who plays this part for reasons of his own. However, the setting up of the gold-finding scheme and associated complexities takes a bit of time and word space, so the first half, entertaining though it undoubtedly is, is a little slow-paced, as it takes a half of the novel for French to set up the crime context and background, before the action takes place.

Despite being the best of friends, Cal and Trey do not act in partnership. Cal’s concern is for Trey’s well being, knowing she is caught up by all this because her callous father, Johnny, uses her without a thought for her safety or reputation, to further his schemes. Cal, all too aware that for all his closeness with Trey, he has no actual claim on her, dare not expect her to be neutral about her father, and does not want to compromise her loyalties, but neither does he want her to get involved in a dangerous situation. Trey, on the other hand, keeps her own counsel instead of confiding in Cal because she knows she is being kept in the dark and that he is not sharing his knowledge or plans with her, and she doesn’t appreciate being treated as a kid. Also, Trey has an agenda of her own which she knows Cal would not approve of. Johnny tries to play everyone off against everyone else, but is over confident of his own abilities, and ends up creating a very tricky situation.

French’s forte is in writing dialogue, which is fast and jibing, packed with wit and slurs, rich in the local vocab, expressions, and slang. She is also a master of creating a situation where tension can be racketed up and up:

‘It’s none a your business, is what it is,’ Francie tells Johnny. ‘Ye can all do whatever you want. I’m only saying, he can’t walk onto my land and take what he likes.’

‘Jesus fuck, you’re some dose, d’you know that?’ Sonny explodes at Francie. ‘Here’s everything going great guns, and you sitting there with a puss on you that’d sour milk, looking for holes to pick. Would you not shut your gob for the one evening , and let the rest of us enjoy ourselves?’

‘He’s thinking a-fuckin’-head,’ Senan snaps. ‘You should try it yourself sometime.’

‘He’s being a fuckin’ moan.’

‘Arrah, shut the fuck up, wouldja, and let the men with sense do the talking-‘

All of them are too loud and too quick off the mark. Cal can feel the electric charge jittering though the air. Someone is liable to get his ass kicked tonight. Cal is aware that, once he says his piece, there’s a fair-to-middlin’ chance it could be him.”

The expressiveness of the Ardnakelty talk is so fun to read, because all the people seem to express themselves so vividly. When the village shop finds everyone coming along for a gossip, Noreen says.

Every man, woman and child for miles. Crona Nagle, d’you remember her? She’s ninety-two years of age, hasn’t left the house since God was a child, but she got the grandson to drive her down yesterday. (p296).

When Cal’s engagement is announced, his neighbour comes to coax him out to the pub for a celebratory drink:

“Don’t keep me hanging about. I’ve a mouth on me like Gandhi’s flip-flop” (p303).

Once again as we saw in The Searcher, we see that in the close-knit, small community in remote Ireland, neighbours live in each other’s pockets, perform for each other, love and hate fiercely in close proximity, and nurse feuds and allegiances with dedication. French draws readers into this insignificant little place, making it feel like the most fascinating and remarkable of places. Under her handling, the characters come vividly to life, even those who are more peripheral, but still so immediate with a few strokes of her pen. French’s Ardnakelty community reminds me a little Elizabeth Gilbert’s Stern Men. Stern Men was set in a lobster-fishing community off the coast of Maine, while Adnarkelty is very much an Irish village in the mountains, but the people seem similar in type – taciturn, hardened by a hard life, with a curiously tender underside to many of them, extremely prideful and self-sufficient.

The pacing of the novel is not quite perfect, as mentioned already, but also, the ending is just a touch anticlimactic, not exactly a damp squib, but not exactly a high point either. However, none of this matters too much because French’s writing is in a league of its own, evocative, transformative, and exhilarating. It is a satisfyingly lengthy novel of over 400 pages, but as with almost all French novels, one wishes it were double the length. I loved reading of the Dublin police squad in French’s early novels, but have quite developed an attachment to this Cal and Trey Ardnakelty series too (if 2 books can be called a series). Just groaning at the thought of having to wait a few years before the next Tana French novel comes my way…but it will be well worth the wait, of that I am convinced.