Review: "The Hunter" by Tana French

The Hunter by Tana French
Published March 2024 via Viking
★★★★

Cal Hooper is back for book two, and things are about to get messy...or perhaps just messier. A few years have passed since Cal moved to Ardnakelty. He's more entrenched in the town's daily life, Trey—the local kid for whom he serves as mentor and, often, family—is growing up, and of course things are never quiet long enough.

The Hunter brings back in most of the usual suspects, this time on a less usual quest: to find gold on their land...or rather, to plant gold on their land to con a con man. And so Cal finds himself needing to decide just how involved he wants to get in some local crime, and how best to protect the people he cares about, and just how dangerous the new faces in town are.

[She] may be doing Ardnakelty's bidding, but her aims and her reasons are all hers. She's not the townland's creature in this, or Lena's, or Cal's: she's rising up as no one's creature but her own. (410)

I'll be honest: Some of the plot points in this one stressed me right out. When Cal is deciding how involved to get, he's also aware that he can't necessarily decide what it will cost him or when to get out...especially as the stakes get higher and higher. Eventually there is a catalyst, and that catalyst provides instant relief...but it also raises other stakes.

It's a slow burn of a summer in The Hunter, and a slow burn of a book. I'm enjoying how much this series is about community, and the ties that bind, and the things that tear people apart—there's a mystery and a murder, sure, but what moves me forward and keeps me reading is wanting to know what happens to Trey, to Lena, to Cal.