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ranked #231,676 most helpful
out of 571,544,897 reviews
★☆☆☆☆
A book in three acts--CAUTION: SPOILERS.
"In the Woods" can be summarized as a book with three acts.
Act I superbly sets up an interesting and even compelling mystery. One of the best openings I have ever read. The heart-rending murder of a child seems to promise a deep and appropriate cause commensurate with the magnitude of the crime.
But then Ms. French runs out of gas. Act II is a tedious bore going nowhere and featuring the wimpish hero's drunkeness and smoking as time fillers.
And Act III is an anti-climatic disappointment of the first order. After beginning a seeming epic of evil, the perp turns out out to be motivated by the most banal of motives. The murder of a little girl is trivialized and the excellent build-up ruined.
And dont even get me started on the author's cheating the reader by leaving the other major mystery unresolved. Indeed, the author spends an inordinate amount of time telling us about the personal life of her detective. One would expect this to have something to do with the two mysteries she constructs. It does not.
In sum, a mystery that promises much and delivers little.
