The Searcher: A Novel

"Now, this is interesting because Roger Clark, who is an American-Irish-British actor, has to use all of that in this story, which is about an American cop who has left Chicago and gone to a rural Irish village, presumably to get away from everything. That’s not how it works out, as you know. Roger Clark has to be an American and then we have all of the Irish villagers. It’s a great story with wonderful suspense. It lends itself extremely well to audio and Roger Clark does a beautiful job. Oftentimes any kind of suspense or mystery works extremely well on audio. In this case, Roger Clark doesn’t give anything away—although Tana French does a little bit. There’s a lot of suspense and then there’s a big twist that has to be handled fairly carefully by a narrator, because it’s not just in the writing: you have characters, you’ve got voices. So it’s fascinating what Roger does. He does it very well. There have been comparisons, that The Searcher is like an American Western. Either I don’t know much about American Westerns or it just didn’t connect on that level for me. It seemed to me like an Irish story, about everybody knowing so much back history about everybody else in the village and in the area. Roger Clark has a great voice for this, he’s a great American cop. In the mystery category, there were a couple of others that I wanted to mention. One is All the Devils are Here , which is by Louise Penny. For the American audience, it’s read by Robert Bathurst. He’s been reading that series for American audiences for several years and does a great job. We have a wonderful podcast interview with him about doing the series, which is why I was excited about it. However, in the UK, Adam Sims is the narrator of the Louise Penny series. It’s still a great story and I’m sure it’s good because the story is so good but I can’t listen to it. Yes, The Splendid and the Vile , which is the Erik Larson book about Winston Churchill and his family. In the US, it’s narrated by John Lee, who is British. Another mystery that I could have talked about is One by One by Ruth Ware. We love Imogen Church who is a British narrator and has done all of Ruth’s other titles. We’ve done interviews with her . She’s fabulous and it’s a great story."

"The Searcher has been on quite a few best of 2020 lists this year, and again, I thank Robin Whitten for pointing out the brilliance of the audiobook in particular. The Searcher takes us to a village in Ireland and a retired Chicago cop who has just moved there and is doing up a rundown old house. His character is completely credible, and I can see him in front of his house, sanding down a piece of wood, as I write this. The book is slow-moving but absolutely absorbing. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter So far, despite the fact that they are so dominant in terms of the crime fiction that’s published, I haven’t chosen any series for my best of 2020 list, where a detective or other character makes a regular outing in every new book. It’s partly that the novelty of a standalone book has been more my thing this year, and I’ve been a bit disappointed by the series books I’ve read. Also, you do really have to start at the beginning of the series, so they’re not ideal for a best of 2020 list. That said, a few of my favourite series did have new books out this year. Troubled Blood was the latest book featuring ex-Afghan war vet Cormoran Strike and his detective partner, Robin Ellacott. This series by Robert Galbraith (aka JK Rowling) is brilliant; I’m a huge fan. I also always look out for the latest Helen Fields novels, about two Edinburgh police detectives, Luc Callanach and Ava Turner. I’ve listened to all of them while running—including the latest, Perfect Kill , and haven’t been disappointed yet."