Maureen Corrigan

The wonder of French's style is that her novels unfold almost exclusively through conversations in which she conveys the deeper messages lurking inside everyday speech.

There's a scene early on here that should be taught in MFA programs.

Tommy, with son Eugene in tow, surprises Cal outside his cottage.

Tommy wants to hire Cal to investigate Rachel's death.

He also tries to finagle an invite into Cal's cottage.

After all, rain is imminent.

The tension mounts, as with nothing but smiling pleasantries coming out of their mouths.

It's clear these two men are telling each other to go to the devil.

Given French's subtle style, any blunt speech is startling.

Towards the end of the novel, Cal is riding in the company of Mart Lavin, an older man who's been a kind of genius loci, a spirit of the place, throughout this series.

Cal is feeling good about temporarily beating back the developer when Mart urges him to look out the car window.

All around them, the stone walls spread out in a pattern as individual and intimate as a fingerprint.

The rain has faded.

The greens and tawny golds of the fields have a strange rich glow, like they've been infiltrated by some other self from a memory or a dream.

In ten or twenty or thirty years, Mart says, that'll be gone.

Take a good look while you can, boyo.

That's the last of it.

Mart is telling Cal that their fight against the developers is doomed.

But what else can they do but keep on fighting?

The Cal Hooper books, like all great detective series, are about time and loss and the uphill struggle to repair the world.