“What I am telling you, before you begin my story, is this -- two things: I crave truth. And I lie. ”

This book could've been everything a good mystery novel aspires to be. It was realistic, dark, a mystery within a mystery and about the right amount of twisted. The story is a slow-builder. Two detectives are assigned a case where a dead girl is found on an archaeological site. Coincidentally, one of the detectives has a difficult past in the very neighborhood that he had never gotten over.

So what's not to like? So far I've been all praise and it is a two-star review? Well, the trouble started towards the end. You could see who the murderer was from a mile, but our narrator is such a nervous wreck that he was in denial. In fact, In the Woods probably has the least likable protagonist I have come across. That includes some pretty hate-worthy characters, trust me. I have never read a more self-pitying character in my life, and I had to read it from his perspective. This is torture.

The last hundred or so pages were an extra stretch of a novel that could've ended much earlier. The entirety of this is the Rob (Adam) Ryan's "I messed up" show. I had such a hard time going through this that I ended up hating what actually was decent quality writing.

Also, the true mystery remains unsolved. The manner in which the plot unfolded towards the end makes it one of the most disappointing mystery novels I've ever read. Give me old school Conan Doyle over this any day. I can't dig this.