With his talent for imagining complex investigations in an atmosphere of nordic black, her desire to explore social inequalities and the quality of her writing, Catherine Lafrance has everything it takes to become a key figure in detective novels. As for his character, Michel Duquesne, formidable investigative journalist for a major Montreal daily who is reminiscent of a certain Mikaël Blomkvist, he could very well impose himself with Maud Graham, Armand Gamache and Joaquin Moralès in the heart readers.
Appeared in short story collection Crimes at the museum (collective under the direction of Richard Migneault, Druide, 2017), then in We kill the one and Face to face (collectives directed by Sonia Sarfati, Druide, 2019 and 2022), Michel Duquesne makes a remarkable entry into The astonishing memory of ice creamfirst volume of a trilogy and fourth novel by the journalist and screenwriter fascinated by Nordic issues and Scandinavia.
“Officially, this is his first public outing, but he was born in my head several years ago, confides Catherine Lafrance on the phone. Parallel to the collections of short stories, the novel was written. I was very lucky to be able to write these three short stories, which, in the cinema, would be like trailers, because it helped me find the right balance. I made it a character that I would have cared about if it had been written by someone else. »
If she affirms from the outset that Michel Duquesne is her alter ego, she hastens to say that she wanted to establish a distance between the two of them: “It’s not for nothing that he’s a male character, it’s was important for me to create that distance. I was able to draw inspiration from my spouse, some friends, colleagues to build it. I had to look outside myself by adding my own journalistic references. Besides, it was more plausible that he was a journalist than a policeman, because I know the world of policemen like any journalist dealing with policemen. »
Marked by traumatic events from his youth, Michel Duquesne suffers from anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), which sometimes exasperates his colleagues or surprises the people he meets during his investigations. For six years, he has been a couple with the lawyer Odile Imbeault, she too experienced a terrible tragedy. Due to a lack of personnel on his return from the holidays, Duquesne was sent to Saint-Albert-sur-le-Lac, a small (fictitious) town in the Eastern Townships, to cover a fire. There he meets Anne-Marie Bérubé, a talented journalist for the local press, who bears on her face the marks of an accident that was fatal to her mother.
“For me, it was important that there was something deeply human in the characters. Not only are Michel, Odile and Anne-Marie resilient, but because they know they had a narrow escape, they can now work, to the best of their ability, to help others get through it. »
black snow
Suspicious footprints on the snow lead Michel Duquesne to believe that the fire that killed two adults and two children hides many other stories. While William Latendresse, director of media relations, provides him with information piecemeal, the journalist can count on his young colleague, who knows everyone, or almost, in Saint-Albert. One thing leading to another, they discover links between organized crime and influential citizens.
“Where there is man, there is manhood. Behind organized crime, what is there? Simply the intention to own more, make more money and have more power. If there’s one thing organized crime knows how to do, it’s spot people who have something to lose. It is very plausible that organized crime sets up shop in small towns because people turn a blind eye or they are stuck in the throat with this problem because there are no resources. In the novel, someone sounds the alarm, but no one believes him, because the smaller and tighter the community, the less bad people will be believed to be. »
With the complicity of a friend and fellow hacker, Duquesne and his partner will dive into the heart of the dark web where they will be confronted with the worst horrors, which will be left to the reader’s imagination.
“My approach has something journalistic about it. I show enough for people to understand. My goal was not to get bogged down in descriptions that would have been a little gore. I don’t want the focus either on the description of the horror, but on the way in which we discover it, on what it feels like when we discover it and how we can manage to try to fight against it, in this case, by updating it , in full light. »
Camped in a more than freezing January with strong snow squalls and freezing rain, The astonishing memory of ice cream evokes, through its glaucous universe where the most vulnerable are victims of the worst cruelties, the saga Millennium, by Stieg Larsson. Catherine Lafrance does not hide it, she loves winter and Swedish thrillers.
“It’s the Nordic in me! she exclaims. We forget here, especially in Quebec, our northernness. We are Nordics: it is colder in Montreal than in Moscow in winter. We have to rediscover our northernness while being North Americans. The Scandinavians do not have the same way of appreciating society as us, do not have the same values as us. As North Americans, we still have this whole culture of the big house, the big car and the nice, clean, well-cut lawn. I read Swedish authors, but I also read Michael Connelly with great pleasure. However, he is someone who lives in the southern United States, where the population and the issues are not the same, where there is a profound difference in the way of seeing and dealing with things. »
Where does she fit into all of this? “Perhaps at the crossroads, between the Swedish thriller and its North American version. What I write is really anchored in the Quebec territory, here and now — even if the novel takes place in 2018. We are influenced by our environment, we are North Americans, it shows and it feels. Our northernness makes us different people from Californians, from Texans. I feel very, very good in there. »