A Weapon
Chase
A Letter
A Will
Fiesta
In the Forest
Wild Ponies
Vigil
Suspicion
Father John
Shadows
Searching
Donnagh
Houlihan’s Pier
Capture
Reckoning
Interrogation
Absolution
A Plea
Old Times
Evil
Bart Glynn
Grief
Bluebells
Blood
O’Kane
Christmas
Court
Visiting Hour
Heaven
Aileen
Grotto
Scallywag
Praise for In the Forest
Also by Edna O’Brien
A Note About the Author
Copyright
Picador
120 Broadway, New York 10271
Copyright © 2002 by Edna O’Brien
All rights reserved
Originally published in 2002 by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, Great Britain Published in the United States in 2002 by Houghton Mifflin Company, New York
First Picador paperback edition, 2020
The author is grateful for permission to quote from The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats, Vol. 1: The Poems, Revised, edited by Richard J. Finneran (New York: Scribner, 1997). Used with the permission of Scribner, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
The translation of Bryan Merriman’s “Midnight Court” is by Frank O’Connor.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the Houghton Mifflin hardcover edition as follows:
O’Brien, Edna.
In the forest / Edna O’Brien.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-618-19730-3
1. Serial murderers—Fiction. 2. Murder victims—Fiction. 3. Psychopaths—Fiction. 4. Ireland Fiction. I. Title.
pr6065.b7 i5 2002
823′.914—dc21
2001051883
Picador Paperback ISBN: 978-0-374-53877-4
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This is a work of fiction. All of the names, characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.