The Witch Elm

forwards, went down on one knee by the thing and leaned in close. He straightened up fast, with a sharp hiss of in breath.

OK, he said. I think it s real.

Fuck s sake, Leon said, jerking his head upwards. There s no way, like literally no possible

Take a look.

Leon didn t move. Tom stepped back, wiping his hands on his trousers as if he had touched it.

The run down the garden had left my scar throbbing, a tiny pointed hammer knocking my vision off- kilter with every blow. It seemed to me that the best thing we could do was stay perfectly still, all of us, wait till something came flapping down to carry this back to whatever seething otherworld had discharged it at our feet; that if any of us shifted a foot, took a breath, that chance would be lost and some dreadful and unstoppable train of events would be set in motion.
Let me see, Hugo said quietly, behind us. All of us jumped.

He moved between us, his stick crunching rhythmically into the grass,and leaned over to look.
Ah, he said. Yes. Zach was right.

Hugo, I said. He seemed like salvation, the one person in the world who would know how to undo this so we could all go back inside and talk about the house some more. What do we do?

He turned his head to look at me over his shoulder, pushing up his glasses with a knuckle. We call the Guards, of course, he said gently.

I ll do it in a moment. I just want

Buzzfeed

Detail-rich sequences lead to psychological insights and unexpected revelations.
The Wall Street Journal

The literary world s favorite mystery writer.
The Cut

Since bursting onto the mystery scene with her genre-bending 2007 debut In the Woods, Tana French has cemented her reputation as a literary novelist who happens to write about murder.
Vulture

Tana French she of the lusciously complex sentences, she of the dense and eerie atmospheres is one of the greatest crime novelists writing today. . . . The Witch Elm is a rich, immersive, and spine-chilling book, because Tana French is great at what she does and she knows how to tell a story. But it s also a scathing and insightful deconstruction of social privilege, coming from a master of the form at the height of her powers.
Vox

A crime thriller at the top of its game.
InStyle

Tana French s new novel is an intriguing blend of whodunit and who am I . . . a high priestess of tense, twisty plots . . . the mystery s resolution is astonishing.
O, Oprah Magazine

Spooky. . . . one of the premier voices in contemporary crime fiction . . . The final revelations in Witch are startling . . . a whodunit far more memorable for the why than the who.
Entertainment Weekly

French s alluring storytelling keeps you hooked.
Time

French burrows deeply into her victim s psyche, plucking out his thoughts and presenting them with such elegantly worded descriptions one may think the author has nestled herself in an armchair squarely in Toby s frontal cortex . . . This one is worth two readings: the first with the constant tightening of the chest that accompanies all of French s work, the second after the reader can breathe again.
The Associated Press

Scratch a bit beneath the surface of The Witch Elm, then, and you ll find a book that captures the tensions of our current era, which is defined both by identity politics and the backlash against them. Through Toby, the novel offers powerful insight into how luck which is, often enough, another way of saying privilege can blind people to the suffering of others, with disastrous consequences.
Quartz

A thrilling novel about privilege, family lore, and perception.
PopSugar

The crime writer for people who think they don t like genre fiction. Her prose is enveloping and intricate, but casually masks its cleverness. She sucks you in with mystery, then unfurls a masterfully rendered, super specific slice of Irish society.
Vogue.com

Tana French is at the cutting edge of crime fiction, and The Witch Elm pushes its boundaries further.
The New Republic

A spellbinding stand-alone novel carefully crafted in her unique, darkly elegant prose style.
Booklist

Prose so smooth you forget about it and just sink right in.
Literary Hub

Exquisitely suspenseful.
Bustle

Tana French s The Witch Elm is a chilling mystery about the unreliability of memory.
Real Simple

You savor the details the delicious portrayal of crisp fall weather in Ireland as you race through the pages. . . . A tick-tocking mystery and a fascinating portrayal of memory as a cracked mirror, through which the past can t quite be seen clearly.
Seattle Times

French spins a compelling, twisty plot and maintains an atmosphere of foreboding and paranoia that runs throughout the book . . . games within games as each tries to deflect blame from themselves and onto someone else . . . [but] French has still created a compelling novel of suspense, in which a world that no longer makes sense is the scariest thing of all.
Providence Journal

An amazing read from an iconic thriller writer.
Mystery Tribune

Fans of [Tana French s] previous Dublin Murder Squad books will find themselves happily tangled up in her new novel, and ultimately delighted by the deep psychological dive she leads them on.
Mystery Scene

Tana French, having tailored psychological suspense to her own voice, demonstrates anew that the solution never fits neatly into the crime-solving order that detective novels demand.
Bookforum

Edgar-winner French is at her suspenseful best in this standalone, in which an Irishman, who s always considered himself a lucky person, has to reassess his past in the light of a gruesome find on the grounds of his family s ancestral home.
Publishers Weekly

The story is compelling, and French is deft in unraveling this book s puzzles . . . Psychologically intense.
Kirkus Reviews

French s slow-burning, character-driven examination of male privilege is timely, sharp, and meticulously crafted. Recommended for her legions of fans, as well as any readers of literary crime fiction.
Library Journal