The Hunter
The Hunter is Tana French's second Cal Hooper novel, published by Viking in March 2024 and set two years after The Searcher.
Cal, the retired Chicago detective who came to the village of Ardnakelty looking for quiet, has built something like a life there. He has the cottage and the workshop, he has Lena, and he has Trey Reddy at his elbow learning to work wood. It is the summer of a drought, and the townland is dry and short-tempered.
Then Johnny Reddy, Trey's father, walks back into the village after years away. He has an English millionaire in tow and a story about gold in the mountain, and the men of Ardnakelty want to believe him. Trey wants something else entirely, and what she wants has to do with her brother. When a man turns up dead and a detective arrives from Dublin, Cal and Lena find themselves trying to stand between a teenager and the thing she has decided to do.
French has called it a book about revenge and about families, the ones people are born into and the ones they put together for themselves. It carries the shape of a western as much as a crime novel, and it moves at the pace of a place where everybody is watching everybody. Named one of the New York Times' best thrillers of 2024 and shortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger in 2025.
A retired Chicago police detective who moved to a village in the west of Ireland and has been trying to keep out of other people's business ever since.
A teenager from the mountain who learns carpentry at Cal's workbench, and who is carrying a plan of her own about her brother.
Trey's father, back in Ardnakelty after years away, with an English investor and a scheme about gold in the mountain.
A widow of the townland and Cal's partner, who reads Ardnakelty more clearly than he does.