Tana French is a sentimental writer. She believes in heroes (usually flawed), resolutions (sometimes improbable), and redemption. Sentimentality is a useful quality in a mystery novelist, especially when it’s laced with some cynicism. It makes for attractive leading characters and tends towards the kind of neatly resolved stories that are a big part of the genre’s attraction.

A year has passed since I last read one of her novels. That was The Wych Elm, an intricate, tightly knotted story set in Dublin that I remember as having been too long and too meandering to be entirely satisfying. A year on and the prolific Ms. French has taken us to a very different Ireland for her newest story, to its “wild west”, Connemara. It’s here, appropriately enough, that Cal, a former Chicago police officer, has chosen to retire, spending his time fixing up a dilapidated old farmhouse and getting to know his quirky neighbors before trouble comes calling. It’s the kind of trouble that makes it important to acquire a rifle, thereby completing the picture of a 19th century frontier man transplanted to 21st century rural Ireland.

At its heart, The Searcher is a straightforward morality tale, with echos of those black-and-white cowboy movies made by the likes of John Ford in the 1950s. (I assume the novel’s title is a conscious nod to Ford’s film of 1956). It appeals to our longing that right should prevail, even in times when the lines that separate good guys from bad, justice from injustice, and redemption from perdition get blurred. Bad things may happen to good people. Greed and stupidity may be rife and innocence in short supply, but good outcomes are still possible if individuals do the right thing. How much you enjoy The Searcher may depend on whether you believe that.