I usually want my thrillers to move at the speed of a Code Blue. Get in, shock the heart, get a pulse, get out. Tana French does not do that. This book is twenty hours long. Twenty. That's almost two full night shifts back-to-back.
I started listening to In the Woods during a particularly slow Tuesday night (knock on wood, I shouldn't even type that), and honestly? It felt less like a thriller and more like a psychological autopsy.
The Accent Elephant in the Ambulance
Let's address the vitals immediately because this nearly made me DNF in the hospital parking lot. The book is set in Dublin. The characters are Irish. The slang is Irish. The narrator, Steven Crossley? He sounds like he's about to serve tea to the Queen.
It's jarring. Like seeing a podiatrist try to run a neuro consult.
But—and this is a big but—once I got over the cognitive dissonance, the man can actually act. He doesn't do the accents, but he captures the exhaustion. Rob Ryan, the detective, is a mess. A functioning mess, but a mess. Crossley's voice has this crisp, detached quality that actually fits a guy who's trying desperately to hide a massive childhood trauma while investigating a murder that looks exactly like his own past. It's weirdly effective. He nails the emotional breaks, even if the geography is wrong.
A Slow-Motion Car Crash
If you're looking for a fast-paced procedural where they catch the bad guy in chapter 50 and everyone goes for beers, turn around now. This isn't that.
This is a slow burn. Super slow. Like, "waiting for a psych consult on a holiday weekend" slow. But the writing is gorgeous. Family Upstairs has that same creeping dread—the kind that makes you double-check your locks. French describes the woods and the suburbs in a way that made me check my rearview mirror twice on the drive home. It's atmospheric and heavy.
(My husband Carlos asked why I was sitting in the driveway for ten minutes after I got home. I told him I was finishing a chapter. Really, I just needed to shake off the creepiness before I went inside to hug my kids.)
The "Messy Chart" Ending
I'm going to be vague to avoid spoilers, but we need to talk about how this wraps up. A lot of reviews hate it. They want the neat suture line. They want the scar to fade perfectly.
As someone who sees the worst of humanity at 3 AM, I actually respected it.
Real trauma doesn't always resolve neatly. Sometimes the labs don't come back with a clear answer. Sometimes the patient walks out against medical advice. The ending is frustrating, yes. It left me yelling at my dashboard a little bit. But it felt honest. That's something I appreciated about Undone too—not everything wraps up in a bow. The messiness felt like what I see in the ER every week. Not satisfying in a Hollywood way, but it sticks with you.
Who's This For?
Listen if you want literary prose, psychological depth, and don't mind a twenty-hour commitment that rewards patience over adrenaline. Skip if you need your mysteries solved clean and your accents geographically accurate.
Clocking Out
So, yeah. It's long. The accent is wrong. The pacing is glacial. But I haven't stopped thinking about it for three days. That counts for something.
