A book that no matter how fast the reader connects the dots still produces a bombshell that’s both brilliant and diabolical.
Though this isn't the first of Lemaitre's books to be translated into English—that would be Alex (2013)—this was the first he wrote, and it introduces his unique and unforgettable police investigator, Commandant Camille Verhœven.
Verhœven, the diminutive (4 foot 11 inch) head of the Paris homicide squad, has a terrible crime on his hands: Two women were found gruesomely murdered, one of their heads nailed to a wall, their fingers severed and arranged, their bodies gutted and splattered with blood and feces, the words “I AM BACK” written in blood. Verhœven and his team—which includes his friend and sidekick, the wealthy and aristocratic Louis—are stymied by the case. Although the dead women were found in an apartment in an otherwise abandoned industrial district, the man who rented out the apartment, Cottet, says that his tenant, Jean Haynal, disappeared after he took the place, and he remembers little, if anything, about the man. After the two women are identified as prostitutes Évelyne and Josiane and their investigation reaches a dead end, the team discovers a link to another disturbing killing, this time in Tremblay. In that case, the young woman's death reminds Verhœven of something he’s read, and soon he’s putting the evidence into a context that is disturbing in its unpredictability. Making Verhœven’s job even more difficult is that information keeps leaking to the press, infuriating his superiors at a time when he can least afford to be distracted: He's about to become a first-time father with his beloved wife, Irène, who is more than ready to have her baby. Lemaitre’s measured, intelligent approach to a police investigation rings of authenticity, and he manages to make even the mundane activities interesting. But the real genius of this novel are the twists Lemaitre incorporates into the storyline, lifting it above the genre and into a different category entirely.
A book that no matter how fast the reader connects the dots still produces a bombshell that’s both brilliant and diabolical.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-62365-800-7
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Mobius
Review Posted Online: Sept. 17, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2014
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
Eskens’ debut is a solid and thoughtful tale of a young man used to taking on burdens beyond his years—none more dangerous...
A struggling student’s English assignment turns into a mission to solve a 30-year-old murder.
Joe Talbert has had very few breaks in his 21 years. The son of a single and very alcoholic mother, he’s worked hard to save enough money to leave his home in Austin, Minnesota, for the University of Minnesota. Although he has to leave his autistic younger brother, Jeremy Naylor, to the dubious care of their mother, Joe is determined to beat the odds and get his degree. For an assignment in his English class, he decides to interview Carl Iverson, a man convicted of raping and killing a 14-year-old girl. Carl, who maintains his innocence, is dying of cancer and has been released to a nursing home to end his life in lonely but unrepentant pain. The more Joe learns about Carl—a Vietnam vet with two Purple Hearts and a Silver Cross—the more the young man questions the conviction. Joe’s plan to write a short biography and earn an easy A turns into something more. Even after his mother is arrested for drunk driving and guilt-trips Joe into ransacking his college fund to bail her out, he soldiers on with the project, though her irresponsibility forces him to take Jeremy into his care. But it’s his younger brother who cracks the code of the long-dead murder victim’s secret diary and an attractive neighbor, Lila Nash, who has her own agenda for helping Joe solve the mystery, whatever the risk.
Eskens’ debut is a solid and thoughtful tale of a young man used to taking on burdens beyond his years—none more dangerous than championing a bitter old man convicted of a horrific crime.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61614-998-7
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Seventh Street Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 8, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2014
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