In the Woods  In the Woods is a 2007 mystery novel by Tana French about a pair of Irish detectives and their investigation of the murder of a twelve-year-old girl. It is the first book in French's Dublin Murder Squad series. The novel won several awards such as the 2008 Edgar Award for Best First Novel by an American Author, the 2008 Barry Award for Best First Novel, the 2008 Macavity Award for Best First Mystery Novel, and the 2008 Anthony Award for Best First Novel. "In the Woods" and "The Likeness", the second book of the Dublin Murder Squad series, are the inspiration for the BBC and Starz's 2019 "Dublin Murders", an eight-episode series. Twenty-two years prior to the novel's events, twelve year-old Adam and his two best friends failed to come home after playing in the familiar woods bordering their Irish housing estate. The Gardaí find Adam shivering, clawing the bark of a nearby tree, with blood in his shoes and slash marks on his back. His friends are never found. He is unable to say what happened to them. Now using his middle name, Rob, he is a detective with the Murder Squad. His amnesia holds to the present day. The plot of the novel circles around the murder of a twelve-year-old girl, Katy Devlin, whose case Rob and his partner Cassie Maddox are assigned to investigate. The body is found in the same woods where Rob's friends disappeared, at an archaeological dig site; and the coincidence is enough to make Rob nervous, though he insists to his partner that he is fine. Cassie and Rob have been partners for a few years and get along famously, teasing one another and completing one another's thoughts. Cassie is one of the few people who knows the truth about Rob's past. There are many rumours that they are romantically involved, though both of them scoff at the idea, despite the fact that they live almost like a married couple, spending a lot of time at Cassie's cooking dinner for one another, drinking wine, and having Rob crash on Cassie's couch across the room. Katy's murder takes the pair along many lines of investigation. Her death might be related to her father's protests against the new motorway meant to go straight through the dig site, or one of the students on the dig might have attacked her. She might have been abused by her father or someone else (her mother, twin sister, or older sister) in the family.