Borrisokane Library’s Book Club meets once a month. This month we read Tana French’s whodunnit ‘The Wych Elm’. Our bookclub member, Diana, wrote up the following review.

‘The Wych Elm’ by Tana French.

Well now, I think this is the first ‘whodunnit’ that I have ever read which left me wondering who the killer was! One reviewer compared Tana French to Donna Tartt. While I do not entirely agree with that, I would certainly compare her with Agatha Christie.

The storyteller is a man called Toby who was working for a small art gallery not far from Grafton Street in Dublin. A workmate who was in charge of the exhibitions suggested having a show of artworks by disadvantaged youths and provided a large collection of scruffy young persons, some of whom had criminal records. The idea was successful but the workmate was a crook and sooner rather than later Toby was hospitalised after an attack from a pair of supposed burglars. His recovery was long and slow and involved a stay with an uncle and some cousins he had grown up with, in the country. It was here a skull was discovered inside the trunk of a Wych Elm tree in the garden and I’m not going to say any more except that it was very hard having to put the book down occasionally!!!

By Diana Elrington.