So I’m looking for the potential mystery in just about everything, and it doesn’t have to be a murder mystery. I remember lying there thinking, ‘Right, when I die, I am asking God what happened.’ Only the lifeboat was gone.’ I was enthralled. ‘Breakfast was still cooking in the galley, and nothing was disturbed. One of them was on the Mary Celeste – the ghost ship that showed up drifting with nobody on board. I remember being around six and reading a school book that included little comprehension pieces. I like looking for the potential mystery in everything. Do you see similar possibilities elsewhere? Donna Tartt saw possibility for murder in a classics department. One of the defining reading experiences for me was in college when I read Donna Tartt’s The Secret History.ĥD: When you survey the world, you must see possibilities. And if they want to just take it on its own terms where there might be elements of both, that can work too. If they’re reading it as literature, great. If somebody’s reading this as crime, great. I don’t see why you couldn’t aim for all of it. Literature over here? ‘It’s got all the themes, it’s got the great writing, but probably the plot is pretty boring and involves a lot of people staring out their windows in some deeply symbolic urban landscape.’ Crime? ‘Oh,’ they say, ‘it’s got a gripping plot, but probably two-dimensional cliché characters, not great writing, no thematic depth.’ I’m not a big believer in genre boundaries. Tana French: I’m aiming to do a bit more, definitely. She examines what can unsettle any particular land, her own included.įive Dials: When you're talking about your books, and someone says, 'Oh, they're murder mysteries,' do you ever have to say: 'Well, I'm doing a bit more here'? Like Tartt, she wants more than mere murder. Her books have sold millions of copies and some of the earlier novels are being made into a television series for the BBC. We also drifted back to the past, to the books she inhaled as a younger reader, including another work that defies genre boundaries: The Secret History.Ĭrime has been good to French. Over the course of our conversation, in a busy café in Dublin, French wanted to talk about the challenge of this new POV. The narrator is not a detective, but rather an entitled young white man named Toby who sustains neurological damage after an assault by two burglars. Her latest, The Wych Elm, is a departure of sorts. Like an actor keen to play each role, French has inhabited the consciousness of one detective after the next over the course of six novels: In the Woods, The Likeness, Faithful Place, Broken Harbour, The Secret Place, The Trespasser. As the creator of the fictional Dublin Murder Squad, she’s chosen a new narrator for each instalment. Tana French’s novels are prized by connoisseurs of crime fiction.

The wych elm tana french