Rob tries to remember what happened over twenty years ago, and his repressed memories put him on the trail of a gang rape he witnessed in the woods. There's also the possibility that the present-day case relates to the 1984 disappearance of Rob's best friends, Peter and Jamie. Was it her father, Jonathan, who leads the Move the Motorway campaign, which is trying to, well, move a motorway that is going to demolish the Knocknaree woods? Was it Mark, the archeologist who is a little too attached to the woods, and whom Rob thinks isn't above human sacrifice? Was it a mysterious man in a tracksuit who was allegedly seen at the site by Damien, another archeologist, and Jessica, Katy's twin sister? Was it one of the landowners who stands to profit greatly from the motorway, who hired an assassin to threaten the Devlin family? Who would want to kill this twelve-year-old girl with a passion for dance? With his partner, Cassie Maddox (no, they're not sleeping together-Rob pinky swears he's not interested in her that way), Rob investigates the murder of Katy Devlin. (Like Superman thinking no one will recognize him if he wears glasses.) He's going by his middle name now to distance himself from the Adam Ryan of the past.

And-what a coincidence-the lead detective on the case, Rob Ryan, is the boy who escaped the woods twenty years ago. She is beaten with a rock and left on a sacrificial stone. Two decades later, another girl is found dead in the woods. The third escapes whatever fate befell the others, emerging from the woods with bloody sneakers and a torn t-shirt. Oh-and probably a murderer, since two of these three kids go missing and are never found. In 1984, in Knocknaree, a charming little town near Dublin, Ireland, three kids romp and play in the woods.

In the Woods by Tana French