The Searcher
Cal Hooper left the Chicago police force after twenty-five years and a difficult divorce, hoping a fixer-upper cottage in a small village in the west of Ireland would give him a quiet retirement. Instead a local teenager, Trey, persuades him to look into the disappearance of an older brother, and Cal's inquiries pull back the peaceful surface of Ardnakelty to reveal secrets the tight-knit community will go to violent lengths to protect. Tana French's slow-burning literary mystery, the first in the Cal Hooper trilogy, was a New York Times bestseller and a Best Book of the Year pick from NPR and the New York Times.
A retired Chicago police detective who moves to a small village in the west of Ireland hoping for a quiet retirement, until a young neighbor draws him into investigating a disappearance.
A local teenager from the Reddy family who persuades Cal to investigate the disappearance of an older brother, Brendan, and who Cal takes under his wing.
Trey's older brother, a teenager who has vanished from the village before the novel begins; his disappearance sets Cal's investigation in motion.
Cal's talkative, sharp-eyed neighbor in Ardnakelty, who knows the village's history and its unspoken rules better than anyone.
A fiercely independent widow, Noreen's sister, who keeps the books for a local stable and becomes Cal's closest confidante in the village.
Yes. The Searcher is the first book in Tana French's Cal Hooper series, followed by The Hunter (2024) and The Keeper.
Tana French has said the title alludes to John Ford's 1956 western film The Searchers. She drew on classic western tropes, like a stranger arriving in a tight-knit community, and transposed them to a small village in the west of Ireland.