Tana French Mixes Ireland and the Old West

The Book Case

ABC News

Fiction, Arts, Society & Culture, Books

4.7 • 913 Ratings

🗓️ 9 April 2026

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We are going full Ireland on this show. First, we talk to the incredible Tana French about her newest, The Keeper. Set in rural Ireland it combines great mystery writing with the classic American Western. Does that sound like it is a long shot? Not with Tana’s talent. We then go from a fascinating conversation with a great author to Hodges and Figgis, our first international bookseller, smack in the middle of Dublin. It’s all Irish and on this week’s Book Case, so pull up a pint and join us. Find books mentioned on The Book Case: ⁠https://www.goodmorningamerica.com/shop/story/book-case-podcast-reading-list-118433302 Books mentioned on this week's show: The Keeper by Tana French In the Woods by Tana French The Likeness by Tana French Faithful Place by Tana French The Searcher by Tana French The Secret Place by Tana French Broken Harbor by Tana French The Witch Elm by Tana French The Trespasser by Tana French The Hunter by Tana French Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry The Grand Sophy by Georgette Heyer The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith The Secret History by Donna Tart Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy Ulysses by James Joyce Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien The City We Became by N.K. Jemison We by Yevgeny Zamyatin All Systems Red by Martha Wells A Psalm From the Wild Built by Becky Chambers The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	9-1-1, where is the emergency?
0:02.7	It's the middle of the night in a small town on the Jersey shore.
0:06.7	Someone reports an abandoned car on a bridge.
0:10.0	A search gets underway for the missing driver, 19-year-old Sarah Stern.
0:14.9	Is it a missing person? Is it a suicide?
0:17.6	At this point, nobody knows.
0:19.6	Old friendships, buried cash, and a sinister plot that was once pitched as a movie, plays out in real life.
0:29.0	I'm Jiu Chang from 2020 and ABC Audio.
0:33.4	Listen now to Bridge of Lies, wherever you get your podcasts.
0:46.3	Music Listen now to Bridge of Lies, wherever you get your podcasts. Well, hello, all you babblyophiles or book nerds, as Kate likes to say, top of the morning to you.
0:52.5	It's the Irish greeting, and it's appropriate in this
0:54.9	case. And the rest of the day to you, I am Kate Gibson, and he is? Charlie Gibson. And that comes from,
1:02.5	I don't know if it's the correct way to do an Irish greeting, but Speaker Tip O'Neill, who was Irish to his
1:09.6	core, and I covered him when I was working for ABC News, covering the House of Representatives, and he was the speaker.
1:17.2	And he told me that. When you say top of the morning to you, the response is, and the rest of the day to you.
1:23.5	I don't know if that's correct, but I've told a number of people that, and I now repeat it on this.
1:28.8	Maybe Tip was making it up, but I don't think so. He knew his way around. And I mention all of this in the Irish connection because our writer today is Irish, and so is our bookstore, which we'll explain in a moment.
1:42.7	Butana French is with us.
1:46.3	A wonderful mystery writer.
1:50.2	But, you know, Kate, I don't think I should, I don't mean to denigrate people who write mysteries.
1:50.9	They're wonderful.
1:52.4	But she's not just a mystery writer.
	...

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