The Keeper: Intrigue and Death in an Irish Village

 

 

 

THE KEEPER (2026)

By Tana French

Viking, 480 pages

★★★★

 

Author Tana French gets tabbed as one of Ireland’s greatest living novelists. She happens to live in Dublin, but she’s a Vermont-born lass who considers herself a homeless vagabond. Her father was an international development economist; Tana has lived in America, Italy, Malawi, Ireland, and several other places. If you’ve read the first two books of the Cal Hooper series, French is a bit like Cal. The Keeper is book three of a series whose very names tip readers of a major theme. The Hunter, The Seeker, and The Keeper are set in the fictional Western Ireland village of Ardnakelty. It’s in the heart of a farming region whose residents have a love/hate relationship to change. How do farmers keep up with Irish modernization without surrendering its historical and cultural identity? This delicate balancing act is at the heart of The Keeper.

 

For those who haven’t not read the previous two books, it’s preferable to do so, but not necessary. French gives plenty of detail about village life and characters that you can quickly catch on to who’s who in Ardnakelty. Cal was the seeker, a former Chicago police detective whose wife chucked him. He, in turn, quit his job and moved to Ireland for a slower, less stressful lifestyle. He got the first, but not always the second. He restored an old cottage away from Ardnakelty’s center, but that alone did not erase the reality of being an outsider to village customs and mores. As “seekers” know, small places often treat outsides with suspicion. Cal is, however, a talented woodworker who helps young vagabond “Trey” (Theresa) Reddy the trade and serves as a surrogate father to her. Cal also begins an affair with the fiercely independent widow Lena Dunne. 

 

The Keeper picks up Cal’s story at a time in which he is in his 50s and “engaged” to Lena Dunne, though it’s a bit of a ruse. Neither has a great desire to remarry, but it gives a respectable veneer to their long-standing romance. It helps that her sister Noreen runs the store where villagers buy essentials and consume another Ardnakelty staple: gossip. Cal’s neighbor is the cranky but amusing Mart(in), a lover of American music, TV, and films. He calls Cal “Sunny Jim” or “Columbo,” named one of his dogs “Kojak,” and is the voice for local farmers. Mart also helped Cal form a group of mates down at Séan Og’s pub. Trey is now an older teen who thinks of quitting school to become a woodworking apprentice, despite her mother Sheila and Cal pushing her to finish her final year before deciding. Telling Trey what to do isn’t a good way to go. She has enough confidence to assert her own will and has acquired mates who roam the woodlands and hills, engage in minor mischief, gang swarm bullies, and play soccer together.  

 

The first part of The Keeper is quite funny as it touches upon the foibles, superstitions, and shenanigans of village life. The locals find themselves deeply divided by the activities of Tommy Moynihan, a local mover, shaker, and (some say) crooked politician who has his finger in every pie. Much of the village is beholden to Tommy because he brought jobs into the area, but there are those who wonder why he has been buying up local land, especially adjacent farms. Rumors circulate that he is about to close a deal that would build a massive factory that would transform Ardnakelty. In true Ardnakelty style, no one takes a direct route to find out, nor would they trust Moynihan if he told them. When it appears that Tommy’s browbeaten son Eugene will stand for a controlling seat on the local council, tongues wag faster.

 

A crisis arises when Eugene’s about-to-be fiancée Rachel drowns in the river, and both the coroner and local Guarda rule it a suicide. Mart encourages those who think it’s a coverup. Lena does some investigating of her own, which leads Tommy to push back so hard that Lena fears she’ll be sent to an asylum. Vigilantism, barfights, and whispered words set villagers against each other. Was Tommy “riding” (having sex with) Eugene’s girlfriend? After the death of another local, does truth matter anymore?

 

French deftly moves from eccentricities to mystery to malleable conclusions. Can Ardnakelty can hold fast to the old ways, or must it change to survive?

 

Rob Weir