#calhooper — Public Fediverse posts

The Keeper by Tana French (audiobook)

I’ve complained, in recent times, about book titles that seem arbitrary. It shouldn’t annoy me, but it does. The Searcher, the first in the Cal Hooper series, I can accept. But I complained about the second book, The Hunter, that it was just a synonym. And this third, I don’t know who the hell The Keeper is meant to be.

It’s another Western from Tana French. West(ern) of Ireland, that is. This is the one about the big cattle barons trying to drive the homesteaders off their land. Yes, it’s Shane, or The Westerner, or, heaven help us, Heaven’s Gate.

We’re back in rain sodden Ardnakelty, and we spend some time adjusting to the pace of life. The sheep have got some kind of foot rot from the wet fields, and Cal is fixing his roof before winter comes. Everybody seems to be pottering along. Cal, former Chicago cop, is more embedded in the community, still in a you-keep-your-place relationship with Lena, still working with Trey on woodworking projects. Trey wants to do an apprenticeship. But then young Rachel Holohan turns up at Lena’s door with a ringwormed cat, using it as a pretext to seek advice. But Lena, as we know, is not one for giving advice. And then Rachel’s body turns up in the river.

It looks like suicide, but Cal has his suspicions. Rachel was affianced to son of local bigshot Tommy Moynihan, and there are schemes afoot. Pretty soon the always prickly community is divided (again), and this time they seem to be coming for Lena.

The author continues to have a gift for the vernacular, and she is a virtuoso of the slow build. For this edition, the voices were brought to life for me by audiobook narrator Roger Clark, who does a standout job (though perhaps struggles with the more feminine voices).

If I have a problem with this one, it’s that the story relies too much on the old trope of people not talking to each other—especially people who are supposedly in love. An unspoken tension keeps Cal and Lena apart for most of the book, and Trey too is sidelined for the most part. Thus Lena’s part of the narrative is isolated from Cal’s, and the found-family aspect of the series takes a back seat to the suddenly much closer friendship between Cal and his neighbour Mart, who somehow seems to be more warm and cuddly than ever before. Which is not to say he’s lost his ruthless streak, but he does act out of character at times.

That said, the narrative is gripping, and the slow-building tension exerts a stranglehold and won’t let go. The last 20% or so is a tour de force, and had this grown man weeping in bed with the dawn chorus.