From hot to cold
Leaving the summer visitors of Sandhamn Island where inspector Thomas Andreasson and lawyer Nora Linde conducted nine investigations, the Swedish author Viveca Sten begins a new series planted in winter and in the ski resort of Åre where, One early morning in December, a corpse is discovered on a chair in the cable car. Enter Inspector Daniel Jindskog — torn between his role as a police officer and that of a father, whom he tames — and investigator Hanna Ahlender, freshly arrived at the station to regain her sanity after having been (unfairly ) fired from the Stockholm police. Alternating points of view, delving into the personal lives of characters as sympathetic as they are atypical, addressing, as always, the place of women in Swedish society, Viveca Sten delivers, with A scarf in the snowa thriller written in the present tense (which gives an interesting impression of immediacy) which will not disorient its admirers other than for its white and cold decor.
Sonia Sarfati
A scarf in the snow
★★★ 1/2
Viveca Sten, translated from Swedish by Rémi Cassaigne, Albin Michel, Paris, 2022, 473 pages
The North found
Isabelle Lafortune made a remarkable entry into the Quebec thriller world with Far North Terminal. Three years later in real time, but seven years in “fiction” time, she returns to us with ice chain, where we find the investigator Émile Morin, his writer friend Giovanni Celani, his daughter Angelune and the cold of our Far North. During this holiday season, Morin heads for the Romaine-1 hydroelectric power station, where a corpse has been discovered. The investigation begins and oh how many ramifications it is possible to make with the events that occurred in this not so distant past from which Morin did not come out mentally unscathed! Very detailed, the result disturbingly echoes current issues (industrial espionage, ecological terrorism, energy independence, China, cryptocurrencies, etc.). And, if he appreciates himself without having read Far North Terminal, ice chain wins… in all, if read after the inaugural novel of a cycle that one hopes to see prolonged.
Sonia Sarfati
ice chain
★★★ 1/2
Isabelle Lafortune, XYZ, Montreal, 2022, 451 pages
extremely green
The climate never stops degenerating and, in no more than ten years, the Green candidate will take power in France while everyone is waiting for the extreme right party that we know. With a very clear and very restrictive program, Pierre Savidan’s Vital Movement is therefore taking the bull by the horns. It imposes a whole series of new rules by investing heavily in public transport and overtaxing the profits of banks and large corporations. Its flagship measure, the SEI, for Individual Ecological Scoring (French one day…), involves a very clear self-censorship of the most common behaviors, such as junk food and air travel: the higher the SEI, the less tax you pay . And vice versa too, of course. France is torn apart and the world is silently waiting to see what happens next… If all this were carried by less stereotypical characters and a little more inspired writing, Bronnec’s book would be even more disturbing.
Michael Belair
Collapse
★★★1/2
Thomas Bronnec, Gallimard “black series”, Paris, 2022, 462 pages
What a family!
Jack Reacher does not change: curious – often too much, even – and fiercely independent, he is still the dangerously effective killing machine that we have known since his beginnings. Appearing in French at the turn of the millennium, this free electron of the US Army has prevailed everywhere, but especially in Latin America and in the southern United States near the borders of Texas and California. With rather robust methods. And always on the “good” side. Here he is this time in New England, on vacation in the hinterland, in search of traces of his father born in Laconia, a disappeared hamlet of New Hampshire. His “muscular” curiosity will make him meet good people and others who are not at all sympathetic, including a distant relative, who have invested in a forbidden sport that pays off big: hunting rare game. Bow. In forest. We’ll let you guess what it’s about… A twisted story that builds slowly, completely different from what Lee Child had accustomed us to so far.
Michael Belair
times of the past
★★★
Lee Child, translated from English by Elsa Maggion, Calmann-Lévy “Black”, Paris, 2022, 442 pages