The Hunter

French’s follow-up to The Searcher returns with familiar characters, including former Chicago police detective Cal Hooper, who has retired to a small village in Ireland. He’s involved with a local woman, Lena, and has taken on a bright teenage girl named Trey as his carpenter’s assistant. Cal and Trey repair and restore old furniture, giving her much-needed marketable skills. Then Trey’s ne’er-do-well father comes home unexpectedly with a get-rich scheme bound to go wrong. He spins a legend about gold being found in the local river and enlists the support of a posh Englishman eager to gain access to the nearby farmland so he can start digging. The whole enterprise is a scam, and when there’s a reckoning, Cal and Lena must act quickly to extricate themselves and Trey from danger. Roger Clark narrates beautifully, deftly moving from American to Irish accents and providing an engaging presentation of French’s well-paced dialogue and full-bodied characters.