Irish thriller writer Tana French dominates New York Times best-of-century lists – The Irish Times
The New York Times and its readers have ranked Dublin writer Tana French as the most prolific writer of great thrillers this century.
In a pair of lists published over the last week, the US-born author who has lived in Ireland since 1990 appears more often than any of her crime-writing peers. Among the experts (291 editors, booksellers, librarians, book lovers and crime authors), four of French’s books made it to a list of the 50 best thrillers of the 21st century.
Readers were afforded an expanded list of 100, and voted to include nine of French’s novels, alongside the likes of John le Carré, Gillian Flynn, Kate Atkinson and Cormac McCarthy.
Both lists ranked In the Woods, French’s 2007 debut, as her best work. It finished sixth on the readers’ list, while experts ranked it as the third-best thriller written since the year 2000. The New York Times described In the Woods as “an astute and wildly atmospheric portrait of loss, memory and the endless mysteries of human behaviour”.
It is the first in her Dublin Murder Squad series, which concluded with book six, The Trespasser, in 2016. French, who was born in Vermont but settled in Dublin after attending Trinity College Dublin, sets her mysteries in Ireland. Her most recent project is the Cal Hooper trilogy, made up of The Searcher, The Hunter and The Keeper.
Its eponymous protagonist is a Chicago detective who takes early retirement and relocates to the fictional town of Ardnakelty in the west of Ireland. In March, French told The Irish Times that the books had allowed her to explore the western trope of “the stranger who blows into town”, a feeling with which she is personally familiar.
“It’s a perspective I’m interested in because I’m what they call a third-culture kid, which means I’m not really from anywhere. I grew up all over the world,” she said.
