Until May 4, register to try to be part of the Jury of the second edition of the Prix France Bleu du Polar.
You will be able to receive and devour the five thrillers selected by our partner, the Toulouse Polars du Sud festival and then vote for your favorite book.
Each member of the jury will receive the five large format books in competition.
How to register ?
In the form below, submit your contact details and explain your motivation in a few lines. The people selected by our teams will be contacted very quickly.
The selection revealed!
Jeannette and the Crocodile by Séverine Chevalier – La Manufacture de livres
Jeannette is ten years old today. With her mother, they have big plans for this day: they will take the road to see Éléonore, a crocodile found in the sewers near the Pont-Neuf and collected at the Vannes zoo. Jeannette doesn’t want any other present; Ever since she heard about it, Éléonore’s story has fascinated her. But in the little spa town where they live, where the factories close, where we fight to pay the bills, not to drink too much, to try to be happy sometimes, what are the dreams of little girls worth? This meeting with his crocodile, it will be for the birthday of his eleven, twelve or thirteen years… We do not think that it could be a day too late. Jeannette and the Crocodile gives us a poignant chronicle of the lives of a few characters who try to dream of a future despite the infinite harshness of a world of failures and pretense.
Severine Knight takes up writing and vegetable gardening late. Four novels have been published to date: Recluses, Clouer l’Ouest, Les Mauvaises, and the latest, Jeannette et le crocodile, published at the Manufacture de livres in March 2022. If the titles of his books set the tone of the personality of an author, needless to say, in life, Severine Knight is quite badly barred; which isn’t necessarily a flaw when it comes to shaping weird stuff with words. Born in Lyon in 1973, after many years spent in Marseille, she now lives in Auvergne.
The Vestibule of Cowards by Manfred Kahn – Payot et Rivages
In an alpine valley near Italy, a man has settled in an isolated house. He has almost no contact with the neighborhood; his only companion is a dog. One evening, as he returns home after going to town for work, he finds the dog with its throat slit, bathed in a pool of blood. He immediately understands the meaning of this barbaric act. He goes in search of Charles, Josepha’s husband, the man who reigns over the village and the valley, a man whom it is not good to oppose.
Nueve Cuatro by Nicolas Laquerriere – Harper Collins
Who knows 9-4? Who knows those who live and survive there? And above all, who knows his inverted mirror, the 9-4 in the 9-4, the nueve cuatro? A wonderland populated by losers, burnt-outs, kingpins, pimps, wild animals and all the extraordinary stories that go with it.
Among them, Henri, a retired accountant, who lost his half and then a toe due to diabetes. Her daily life resembles a long calm river, until the day her neighbor Clara disappears from the radar. Soulaymane, a small-time debt collector, dreamed of becoming a cop. Looking for this girl, that’s what he needed to revive his heart in slow motion. Brahim, finally, boss of the nueve cuatro. His reign seems eternal, but he’s starting to lose his mind. Putting his city on fire and blood will be his last coup.
Not everyone has the excess to want to print history, however, with this disappearance, everyone will experience their great epic.
Passed by the Fémis, Nicolas LAQUERRIÈRE, is the co-screenwriter of the successful series _Valid_. He has always lived in Choisy-le-Roi, in the heart of this 94 which he made the great heroine of his first novel.
30 grams of Gabrielle Massat – JC Lattes
“Yannick Gallard is thirty-two and a half years old, he is dying and everything is going very well. It’s true, what. It could have been worse. The end could have been desired: landing after months of tears and existential questioning, with its smell of bedsores and disinfectant, icing on a cancer or a neurodegenerative abomination. She could also have played it sneaky and carried him off in his sleep without giving him a chance to say goodbye; even, dirtier still, sucking his brain on hot asphalt after a road accident, savoring his gasps of pain, the horror of his dislocated body, the siren of an ambulance which does not arrive in time. Thirty grams of paracetamol is a pretty pleasant option, after all. »
In this novel in the form of a declaration of love for painting, Gabrielle Massat stages a Toulouse art dealer and his hitman lover in their mad race against time, against the cops, against death. A visceral and addictive thriller.
Gabrielle Massat was born in 1991 in Toulouse, where she works as a masseuse-physiotherapist. When she’s not busy torturing her patients, she writes black novels and reads them to the toad that lives in her garden 🙂
The Hour of the Wolf by Pierric Guittaut – Les Arènes
Are you ready for the return of the beast? Wolves are back in Sologne. When loggers find the mutilated body of the young Maëva, tempers flare. Is it the attack of a beast or a disguised crime? Tension is high between wildlife defenders, hunters and breeders. The media and the authorities are still fanning the fire.
Back in his native region, Major Remangeon, known as “the werewolf”, is a taciturn policeman; in his family, we are bonesetters from father to son. He leads the investigation and tries to appease the spirits, while he is torn between a marriage that is falling apart and a new devouring love. To shed light and regain some semblance of balance, he will have to tap into his deep nature and mobilize all his forces, even the most occult.
Pierric Guittaut was born in 1974. L’Heure du loup is his sixth novel, he is also the author of My pain is savagery (EquinoX, Les Arènes, 2019).