The novelist Roxanne Bouchard, author of a series of thrillers set in Gaspésie, was selected in a list aiming to determine the best detective novel of the last 20 years. The winning work will be determined by a popular online vote.
This competition aimed at crowning the queen or king of crime fiction at the start of the millennium is an initiative of the literary platform Babelio and Quais du polar, a detective literature fair whose next presentation will take place in Lyon, France, in the month of ‘april.
Roxanne Bouchard is in the running for We were the salt of the sea, the first of his detective novels featuring detective Joaquin Moralès. “I’m not going to tell you who to vote for…I’m just going to tell you We were the salt of the sea is on the list,” she wrote on her Facebook page Tuesday, in capital letters and with lots of exclamation points.
The novelist based in Lanaudière – she also teaches at Cégep de Joliette – is on a roll in Europe. Last December, his book The Coral Bridesecond investigation by Joaquin Moralès, was selected among the 20 best thrillers and dark novels by the magazine Telerama.
The competition will be strong for the title of the best detective novel of the last 20 years: Roxanne Bouchard is in competition with very big stars of the genre. Titles by Stephen King, Dennis Lehane, James Ellroy, Fred Vargas and the first book in the series Millennium by Stieg Larsson also appear in this long list.
The Québécoise is, however, not unknown in this network: We were the salt of the sea just won the Quais du Polar Readers’ Prize last year.