So that keeps you on track, to some extent. You know A kills B, and then C finds out whodunnit. But I think, in some ways, mystery was actually a very good way to learn that, because it’s got such a built-in arc. It’s not a part that comes naturally to me, but also I’m lucky: my husband is an actor, as well, and he directs films, and he has a demon eye for structure, right? Because he’s watched every old film in the universe, and so he’s very good on structure, so he reads for me, and he’ll go, O.K., hang on a second, that is not fitting together structurally, that subplot has got lost, or you’re not moving that scene forward enough.

Structure is the part that I have put a lot of work into getting right. I’m pretty at home with characterization, because acting is really good training for that, and I’m at home with the actual sentence-to-sentence writing. Kind of the moment when I found myself turning down acting work, I think that was when I realized that I was really, really serious about this book, and from there on it sort of all followed, and that book was “ In the Woods,” which was published in 2007. I didn’t think I could write a whole book I’d never tried before, but I figured I could probably write maybe a scene and then another scene, and then I had a whole chapter. There was a wood not far from the dig, and I was looking at it and thinking, That would be a great place for kids to play, and then I thought, What if three kids ran in there and only one came out, and he had no memory of what had happened to the other two? And then, What if he became a detective and a case drew him back to that wood? I really want to know what would happen with that story. I was doing theatre and, unless you’re Judi Dench or somebody, the gigs don’t line up right, so there’s always a gap in between, and in one gap I did a few weeks on an archeological dig. I used to write when I was a kid, when I was a teen-ager: we’re talking short stories, and your basic, really terrible teen-age poetry. To be honest, it was sort of always in the cards. Before that you were an actor, and I was wondering how that change came about. You didn’t start writing until you were in your thirties, which might seem to some readers relatively late. Tana French: I like being a bad influence. If I have anything else going on at that moment in my life, I am just not going to be able to do it. I have to ration your books because, once I start one, I am totally lost to the world.

Alexandra Schwartz: Tana, I need to begin with a confession.

Tana french the witch elm review