BOOK TIP

The Searcher

Tana French

When a novel’s opening scene is of rooks killing a rabbit, you carry a sense of foreboding with you throughout the rest of the book. Tana French’s “The Searcher” is a masterful mix of suspense and evocative writing. The story is set in a tiny village in Ireland, where a recently divorced and retired Chicago cop has sought quiet and a simple life. A troubled young boy, though, wants him to search for his missing older brother — although the cop wonders if the brother hadn’t just decided to seek out someplace more exciting to live. French’s lyrical Irish dialogue is intoxicating, as is her description of this starkly beautiful place that seems more menacing as things unfold.

— Kristina Dorsey

TV TIP

Life in Color with David Attenborough

Netflix

My biggest complaint about this show is that my opium/mushroom/pot days are behind me. Still, this series, in which famed naturalist Attenborough leads viewers on a global tour of the uses, causes and arrays of color in the vast expanse of the natural world, is a consistently stunning visual feast. It's rather like a Sailfest fireworks show with animals. On some level, we've all known there are plenty of beautifully hued creatures wandering around or swimming, but I'm not sure we were aware of THIS many — or how they utilize and/or take their cues from the colors. Here's another thing: Attenborough is now 95, and watching him maraud across these habitats with the spry energy of some Crocodile Dundee of Color — Colour? — is in and of itself pretty amazing.

— Rick Koster

MOVIE TIP

The Woman in the Window

Netflix

This thriller wants to feel like a fever dream — to put the viewer inside the might-be-unstable mind of our protagonist and make us wonder what is real — but it ends up seeming overwrought and, at some points, just plain silly. Director Joe Wright fills this adaptation of the bestselling A.J. Finn novel with lots of heavy-handed Hitchcock visual references and with filmmaking that aims for the hallucinatory. It’s even more of a letdown because the cast features top-notch actors. A perpetually on-edge Amy Adams is the agoraphobic on depression meds who thinks she sees a murder. Julianne Moore injects crackling energy into the proceedings as a neighbor who drops by Adams’ apartment. Gary Oldman gets, sadly, little to do as a businessman who wants Adams to mind her own business. There are twists, but the final reveal cheapens the whole thing, turning what was a psychological thriller into a serial-killer flick.

— Kristina Dorsey