You have a set of memories of what your childhood and teen years were like, yet some of us have an encounter, maybe with a friend from that time or a sibling or cousin, who remembers things very differently. Does this rock your confidence in what you thought to be true? In what you think of the person you were, and are? What if their impressions have evidence, or the support of other’s memories, and it contradicts what you thought, and knew to be true? The stories we construct and deeply believe, about who we were and are, and how events occurred, can be slippery, despite our beliefs that they are solid and sure. This is the human experience that Tana French is playing with in her novel The Witch Elm, using a death, which becomes a murder investigation in modern day Dublin, Ireland, as her device.

Toby Hennessey is a successful marketing exec for a trendy art gallery, with good mates he’s had as friends since high school, a sweet, pretty girlfriend named Melissa, and life is very good. In fact, life has always been a coast for Toby, a guy who might get into small messes due to irresponsibility or too much playing around, but who manages to put on the charm and breeze past any consequences. Late one night his apartment is burglarized by two strangers, and Toby is nearly beaten to death. He struggles to recover, but is left with a droopy eye, a stammer, a limp, bodily weaknesses, and memory and cognitive deficits. This is the first rough patch he has ever experienced, and he rebels like a spoiled child, contemplating suicide, just wallowing in the unfairness of it all. Then he learns that his bachelor uncle Hugo has been diagnosed with a cancerous brain tumor. Hugo is one of four boys, one of whom is Toby’s father. Hugo lives in the home where the boys grew up, the Ivy House, after having cared for their parents until they died, and he just never moved out. The Ivy House is the site of frequent family get-togethers, and was where the cousins of Toby’s generation frequently spent the whole summer, under Uncle Hugo’s benevolent oversight. Toby’s cousins, Susana and Leon, are the only children of Hugo other brothers.

Toby and Melissa agree to move in with Hugo and look out for him, keeping him safe and comfortable as his illness progresses. The disabilities Hugo has are somewhat similar to Toby’s neurological difficulties. Toby’s time with Hugo, and seeing Susana and Leon as adults, starts to cause him to re-assess how he viewed himself and his youth. This re-assessment really takes off when Susana’s son Zach discovers a surprise in the old Witch Elm tree in the backyard— a skull. And not only a skull, as the police discover—an entire skeleton. What’s more, the decomposed body of a casual friend of Toby’s, Dominick, a frequent part of the crowd who regularly visited the Ivy House for parties and other get-togethers during the cousin’s lengthy summer stays. Now the stage is set, the pieces are in motion.

As the police investigate the young man’s murder, we get the sense that their civility is a veneer, covering their far greater purpose— gathering evidence to relentlessly seek a murderer. The police push and prod, manipulating and cajoling, and Toby is truly sick of it. He already had a bad taste of police handling in his own attack, and this treatment just furthers his bad attitude. Toby tries to get answers regarding Dominick’s death, not because he cared for this friend—he clearly did not. No, Toby is trying to find out what he himself was really like at that time, and he keeps coming up against evidence that he was not the fellow he thought he was, and life wasn’t so great for those around him. Many things were not as he believed, and he just cannot let go until all is uncovered, discovered, revealed. The last third of the book is riveting, and pulls you through at ever increasing pace, racing to find out the truth. French makes the reader feel a little less complacent, a little less sure of who they have always believed themselves to be.Like truly good mysteries, we not only try to solve the murder, but we learn greater truths about human nature, human capabilities under stress and threat, who we believe we are, and who we really are. This was the first Tana French novel I have read, and I am certain to read more by her. I heard recently she may have a new one coming out in the fall. I will certainly look forward to it.