The Hunter by Tana French Book Review
The Hunter by Tana French: A Meditation on Justice, Power, and Belonging
Tana French has always been a writer who defies genre expectations. While she gained recognition through her Dublin Murder Squad series, which combined literary prose with compelling procedural plots, her recent work has moved away from traditional crime fiction into something deeper, more atmospheric, and psychological.
With The Hunter, the sequel to The Searcher, French doubles down on this shift. Instead of a tightly wound thriller or a classic whodunit, we get a novel that unfolds slowly, immersing us in a rural Irish village where justice isn’t about laws, but about who holds power in the community. This is a book about consequences—about how past violence never disappears but lingers in the air like the oppressive summer heat that French so vividly describes.
If The Searcher was about an outsider (Cal Hooper) learning to navigate the wary, insular community of Ardnakelty, then The Hunter is about the long shadows that power and revenge cast over a place that never forgets its own history. This is not a mystery in the traditional sense; rather, it is a meditation on the repercussions of past violence, and the ways in which history refuses to stay buried—whether in memory, in relationships, or, in this case, quite literally in the ground. French’s themes—justice, vengeance, manipulation, and the weight of family ties—come together in a novel that is less about a crime and more about the aftermath of violence and the moral lines that people must cross to survive.
Plot Overview: The Shadows of the Past
Two years after the events of The Searcher, Cal Hooper, a former Chicago detective, has settled into life in Ardnakelty. His presence in the village remains that of an outsider—respected but not entirely trusted, tolerated but never fully embraced. He’s built a quiet, steady existence, forming a makeshift family with Trey Reddy, a tough, intelligent teenager who is more comfortable tracking animals than interacting with people.
But stability is never permanent, and the return of Johnny Reddy, Trey’s estranged and manipulative father, sets off a chain reaction that forces the town to confront long-buried tensions. Johnny who has always an eye for easy money, isn’t just back to reconnect—he’s here with an Englishman named Duke, and together they bring an enticing promise: gold is buried beneath Ardnakelty’s land, waiting to be unearthed. But gold is not the only thing buried here—so are old grudges, wounds left unhealed, and the festering resentment of those who never left.
For a community where trust is currency and grudges last generations, Johnny’s return is a dangerous disruption. He is a man shaped by survival, someone who thrives on exploiting others, and his presence throws Trey into turmoil. Trey, hardened beyond her years, has spent her life learning how to survive in a world that has never shown her much kindness. Now, with her father’s reappearance, she is pulled into a web of loyalty, revenge, and moral ambiguity, forced to decide whether justice is best served by patience or by action. As tensions rise, the story becomes a slow-burning psychological battle—not about who committed a crime, but about who gets to decide what justice looks like.
French’s Evolution: Crime Fiction as Character Study
French has never been interested in clean-cut resolutions. In The Hunter, she fully embraces this ambiguity, crafting a novel that is less concerned with the mechanics of crime and more with its emotional and moral consequences.
Unlike traditional detective fiction, The Hunter doesn’t hinge on a puzzle to be solved. The murder that occurs is secondary; what matters is how the characters react, how old wounds reopen, and how justice in this community is shaped by unspoken laws rather than legal systems.
At its core, the book asks:
Who has the right to claim justice?
Can justice ever be separate from power?
How do past choices shape the limits of our future?
French’s answer, as always, is complex. This is not a novel of easy heroism. Instead, it’s about the uncomfortable truths that define small communities—how loyalty, vengeance, and survival intertwine until justice becomes something deeply personal rather than universal.
Characterization: The Power Struggles of Ardnakelty
Trey Reddy: The Heart of the Novel
While Cal was the protagonist of The Searcher, The Hunter belongs to Trey. At 15, she is teetering between childhood and adulthood, carrying the weight of a past filled with abandonment and violence.
Trey’s internal conflict—her thirst for revenge, her loyalty to those she trusts, and her battle against the influence of her father—drives the novel’s emotional core. She is a fascinating, raw character, one who is both fierce and vulnerable. She doesn’t just want justice for past wrongs; she wants control over a world that has consistently taken power away from her.
Her evolution is the most gripping part of the novel. At the start, she is single-minded, believing justice means retribution. But as the story unfolds, she is forced to face the deeper consequences of violence. French doesn’t romanticize her anger or paint her as a noble avenger. Instead, she shows how vengeance can be a trap, one that binds people to the very forces they seek to escape.
Johnny Reddy: A Masterclass in Manipulation
Johnny Reddy is one of French’s most compelling antagonists. He is not a villain in the traditional sense—there is no outright brutality or cartoonish evil. Instead, he is a master manipulator, a man who can turn charm into a weapon. His strength lies in his ability to read people, to twist their weaknesses into leverage.
His relationship with Trey is the novel’s most intense dynamic. He is a father, yes, but one who wields fatherhood as a tool for control rather than care. His return forces Trey to confront the contradictions within herself—her hatred for him, but also the pull of his attention. French crafts these moments with incredible nuance, making every conversation between them feel like a battle of wills.
Cal Hooper: The Outsider’s Moral Dilemma
Cal, the ex-cop who fled his old life for rural peace, is once again at the center of the town’s conflicts. But unlike in The Searcher, where he was figuring out how to belong, The Hunter places him in a different moral position. Cal remains the outsider, observing, wary, trying to navigate a moral landscape where the lines between right and wrong blur more with every step as there are no clear rules here, no handbook for dealing with a town that polices itself in ways the law never could.
How much responsibility does he have for Trey? Does he intervene, or does he let the town handle its own justice?
French gives him no easy answers. As an outsider, Cal sees the contradictions of Ardnakelty more clearly than its residents, but he also recognizes that his perception of justice might not be the one that matters here. His role is that of an observer caught in a storm, knowing that no matter what he does, there will be consequences.
Setting: Ardnakelty as a Living, Breathing Character
Few writers capture setting as well as French, and The Hunter is no exception. Ardnakelty is not just a backdrop—it’s an entity that shapes the choices of everyone who lives in it.
The novel takes place during an unusually dry, hot Irish summer, a setting that mirrors the rising tensions of the plot. The heat is suffocating, oppressive, a force that makes people uneasy. It is a brilliant metaphor for the novel’s themes, emphasizing how tension simmers beneath the surface of every interaction.
The landscape—both beautiful and suffocating—mirrors the characters’ internal struggles. There is a sense of entrapment, of isolation, of a place that both shelters and ensnares those who live there.
The village itself is defined by its unwritten rules—who belongs, who doesn’t, and who gets to decide what happens when conflict arises. It’s a place where history isn’t just remembered; it’s a living thing that dictates the present.
French’s prose is lush and immersive, capturing not just the physical world but the feeling of being in it—the quiet of a town that speaks in gestures rather than words, the way suspicion lingers in the spaces between conversations, the heaviness of a summer where everything feels on the verge of combustion.
Theme: The Nature of Justice
At its core, The Hunter is about justice—not the kind found in courtrooms, but the kind that is decided in hushed conversations and long-held grudges. It asks difficult questions:
Who gets to decide what justice looks like?
Is revenge ever justified?
Can you ever escape your past, or does it always come back, demanding payment?
For Trey, these questions are not theoretical. They are immediate, personal, and dangerous. For Cal, they are a reminder that the world he left behind—the one with rules and structure—does not exist here.
The novel also examines power—who holds it, how it is wielded, and what happens when someone tries to take it back. Johnny Reddy is a man who understands power too well, who knows how to use charm as a weapon. Trey is learning how to fight back. And Cal is left trying to navigate the fallout.
Final Thoughts: A Novel About the Cost of Power
The Hunter is a novel about what happens after violence, about the cost of revenge, and about the shifting nature of justice.
French continues to challenge what crime fiction can be, creating a book that is less about solving a mystery and more about unraveling the tangled web of relationships, power, and survival.
Readers looking for a fast-paced thriller might struggle with its deliberate pacing, but those who appreciate rich character work, morally complex storytelling, and deeply immersive settings will find The Hunter to be one of French’s most powerful novels yet.
A gripping, thought-provoking novel that cements French’s place as one of the most sophisticated voices in contemporary crime fiction.
