I’m not big on police procedurals–or John Grisham or Patricia Cornwell (I don’t need to be bored by lawyers and doctors, thanks)–but Tana French’s Edgar Award winning novel In the Woods sounded quite intriguing. I really love a story about characters with a haunted past that must confront it and experience a transformation of sorts in the process. Sadly, that’s not exactly what I got with this book.

As dusk approaches a small Dublin suburb in the summer of 1984, mothers begin to call their children home. But on this warm evening, three children do not return from the dark and silent woods. When the police arrive, they find only one of the children gripping a tree trunk in terror, wearing blood-filled sneakers, and unable to recall a single detail of the previous hours.

Twenty years later, the found boy, Rob Ryan, is a detective on the Dublin Murder Squad and keeps his past a secret. But when a twelve-year-old girl is found murdered in the same woods, he and Detective Cassie Maddox—his partner and closest friend—find themselves investigating a case chillingly similar to the previous unsolved mystery. Now, with only snippets of long-buried memories to guide him, Ryan has the chance to uncover both the mystery of the case before him and that of his own shadowy past.

Richly atmospheric, stunning in its complexity, and utterly convincing and surprising to the end, In the Woods is sure to enthrall fans of Mystic River and The Lovely Bones.

This was a book I enjoyed while reading it and that, in fact, turned out to be quite the page-turner. The real problem crept on me in the aftermath of my finishing it, in those moments when you close the book and ruminate on all the words you just took in.

Bottom line: it was an unsatisfying ending that left a signifiant plot thread just dangling with no sense of closure, with barely a thought given to it in the final pages. The whole draw of the book for me was this connection between Rob’s past and the case he was investigating. I don’t want to spoil potential readers, so I’ll just say that the end didn’t exactly have the coalescing I was anticipating.

I also don’t appreciate the author’s attempt to be clever when she claims that we, the readers, have been duped just as Rob himself was. While this may be true from some readers, it certainly can’t be the case for all. For example, I was not duped. There is a scene in the novel that I suspected was planted as a means of foreshadowing and I thought that it might have a payoff later. It did. So for the author–or more appropriately, I suppose, Rob–to assume I was as fooled as he was is a bit insulting.

Another problem is Rob Ryan himself. By the novel’s end I just didn’t like him anymore. He came off as pathetic, obsessive and foolish. Typically, character stories involve some sort of redemptive angle, or at least an attempt to examine a character’s faults and to learn from them. Of course, not all stories must end this way; a tragic end is often a more powerful way to go, so long as it is apropos to the character(s) journey and/or the writer’s subjacent message. But that is something that must be earned. I’m not saying In the Woods ends tragically per se, but to me, it ends with the character no wiser than when we met him at the beginning. And that is sort of tragic because, really, what’s the point of that?

There’ some good stuff in there, however. Tana French crafts exemplary prose. The words are so deliberate and lulling. There’s a poetry there. But what good are beautiful words without the benefit of a well-designed story?

There is a follow up to this novel. It’s called The Likeness. It is not a sequel, nor is it an origin story. Rather, it takes place awhile after In the Woods and the first person storyteller this time around is Cassie, Rob’s former partner. I did try to read it. Tried. I got to precisely page 100 before I just had to set it aside and resign myself to not finishing it. 100 pages of setup is just way too much. I felt as if nothing were happening. Page 100 is actual where it appears something is about to happen, but by that time, I was not invested enough to care.

Can I recommend In the Woods? Look, it’s not bad. It just needs some tightening up and an ending that at least addresses one of the biggest mysteries within the story. Perhaps Tana French intends to write another book that does indeed delve ito this mystery. But to be honest, I don’t care. I expected a resolution this time around. It almost felt promised. What I can suggest is reading the the prologue. It’s a beautiful piece of prose and it will give you an idea of what this author is capable of. I so enjoyed the style of her writing, I only wish that enjoyed the story she had to tell. So I will keep my eye out on her future endeavors and hope I won’t be quite so disappointed next time.