If French’s first standalone novel lacks the procedural structure of her beloved Dublin Police Squad series, it allows her to flex her skills at character study — especially when it comes to the most unreliable of narrators. The story of Toby, a self-proclaimed “lucky guy” whose status plummets when he’s brutally beaten by intruders, The Witch Elm is a portrait of a man forced to confront his own privilege for the first time. After Toby revisits his family’s estate in the hopes of recovering in peace and instead finds evidence of a murder on the property, “whodunnit” is almost the wrong question. Better to ask: What inequities has Toby previously been fortunate enough to be able to ignore, and how much evil exists in the everyday world if you only look closely enough? Toby’s reckoning feels inevitable — though, this being Tana French, it still shocks.