By WALT GOGOLYA

I recently finished the novel “In the Woods” by first-time author Tana French. I had never heard a thing about it before I picked it up at Borders about two weeks ago. I read the back cover, then the first chapter. Twenty minutes later I was in the check-out line – book in hand.

"In the Woods" is the first book since "In Cold Blood" (which I read junior year of high school) to give me nightmares.

Set in the suburbs of Dublin, "In the Woods" is a multilayered story that combines the gritty worldliness of a police procedural with the eerie chills of a psychological thriller. Think "Law and Order: SVU" meets "The X-Files."

Detective Rob Ryan and his partner, Cassie Maddox, must find a child-killer who has done his dirty work in the same woods where Ryan, 20 years before, was the sole survivor of a bloody incident that left him with a blanked-out memory. Looming on the horizon: the obliteration of the crime scene by a new highway.

Is the new murder related to the earlier disappearances? Are the anti-highway protesters involved? Will pursuing the case unlock Ryan’s memory – and does he really want it unlocked?

When the killer was finally revealed I must admit, I was not SUPER shocked at who it turned out to be, though I was shocked of the motive behind it. However, it’s the story of what ( may or may not have ) happened to Rob Ryan and his two childhood pals 20 years earlier that had me spooked and re -reading chapters trying to piece together the mystery myself.

I recommend this book to the casual reader and I can’t recommend it enough to those of you out there who like a good crime novel with a “whodunnit” storyline.

And while a few mysteries in the book may leave some scratching your heads, the answers are all there for you, it’s just a matter of whether or not you let yourself believe them.