He had to be somebody who had no connection to this town, and Ireland is small. So that’s the only way he could be an outsider. Like maybe he’s going to shoot the corrupt sheriff and set the town to rights, or he’s going to shoot the hero and make everything go to pieces, or he’s going to get shot for interfering with the order they’ve established. But whatever he is, he’s going to stir things up. He kind of strolls into the saloon, and he’s probably got secrets, and he doesn’t answer questions, and he’s often an enforcer of the law. This is your first American protagonist, right?įrench: Yeah, the stranger in town shows up in a lot of Westerns. Johnsen: You made your protagonist in The Searcher an American, which places him into that archetype of the stranger rolling into town. What would I have to change? What would need to shift? And what could kind of stay as it was? A ‘stranger in a strange land’ story So the people living there feel like, if they want any kind of cohesive society, they’re going to have to make their own rules.Īnd so I started thinking about how those tropes of Westerns would transpose onto the West of Ireland.

And there’s also the sense of place that is very distant-not just geographically but also culturally-from any of the centers of power. Westerns tend to have a sense of a harsh country that’s going to demand physical and mental toughness from anyone that wants to make a living out of it. Because they have a lot of resonances with the West of Ireland. The thing that really did it for me and that The Searcher came out of was the settings. Tana French: There are a lot of things I liked about Westerns. And the title is of course a reference to an Alan LeMay book called The Searchers, which then became a John Wayne film. Greta Johnsen: You’ve spoken about how this book is a bit of an homage to Westerns. Just record yourself and send the audio file to are a few highlights from Greta’s conversation with The Searcher author Tana French. And come back later this month for a spoiler-filled chat about The Searcher with our group of panelists … and you! Send us a voice memo with your thoughts on the book.

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