Irène

How it reads

Irène is thriller (police procedural thriller, specifically), and its dominant mood is tense. The suspense is the kind you feel in your shoulders. It moves fast: plot-driven and hard to put down, the kind of book that carries you along even when you're tired.

It's set in an international setting, in the recent past, told in the third person, staying close to one character. Its central concerns are secrets, justice and loss and grief. In weight it sits in the middle: substantial without being heavy going.

It opens a series. The ending is dark — no rescue, no neat bow. At 398 pages it's an ordinary novel's length. It's well known, the kind of book most keen readers have heard of.