Cornelian dilemma
JP Delaney (The girl from before) is the literary equivalent of the bag of pistachios. Which is better, nutritionally speaking, than the bag of chips. In short, you open it and, every time you think that’s enough, you give up and continue for another chapter (or another handful). This is how it is You belong to us, where the parents of a two-year-old toddler learn from a stranger, the father of a kid the same age, that their babies were switched at birth. For 24 months, they have been caring for the other couple’s child. What to do ? Do blood ties prevail over ties created by time? This is a question of innate and acquired, postpartum depression, social classes, manipulation. And it’s fascinating. Until the psychological and family drama gives way, in the last third, to big shoes and big strings. Easy to follow, but not very credible. However, the initial situation and the questions that arise from it remain. They are captivating.
Sonia Sarfati
You belong to us
★★★
JP Delaney, translated by Jean Esch, Mazarine, Paris, 2023, 430 pages
The presence of the absent
Lisa Gardner publishes thrillers with the regularity of a metronome that entertain as effectively as they are quickly forgotten. The summer before, in which she leaves aside her investigators Quincy and Warren, has the same effectiveness, but it stays in the memory longer. The plot takes place in a red light district of Boston, where Frankie, a lone wolf who has had a hard time in life, settles in to shed light on the disappearance of a Haitian teenager. Angélique Badeau disappeared almost a year ago. Now Frankie, since she turned her back on alcohol, has made it her mission to find some of these missing people (they are almost always women) that the police have “abandoned”. Angel will be his 15e case. For her. But the first for readers of Lisa Gardner who creates here an ambiguous main character whose past is revealed little by little; and, above all, a teenager who, although “physically” absent from the plot, is so endearing and poignant that she is its beating heart.
Sonia Sarfati
The summer before
★★★ 1/2
Lisa Gardner, translated by Cécile Deniard, Albin Michel, Paris, 2023, 448 pages
Before Yeruldelgger…
After enjoying phenomenal success with his three novels featuring Chief Inspector Yeruldelgger of the Ulaanbaatar police force in Mongolia, Ian Manook never stopped racking up successes. A prolific writer, we have seen him create an entire Icelandic series, a South American thriller, a Nordic saga, a great Armenian epic and, through all of this, a powerful half-dozen “American novels” by Roy Braverman. But here he returns to Mongolia to paint a portrait of the Russian invasion which almost succeeded in the 1930s in eradicating the culture of the nomadic peoples of the great steppes. Aysuun is the story of the resistance of an indomitable woman — and more than a hundred years old! — the aims of Moscow; it is she who recounts here her implacable revenge in a truculent epic. Despite his known tics, Manook’s writing is as impressionistic as ever and we will quickly feel carried away by this touching story… which ends with the birth of Yeruldelgger.
Michel Bélair
Aysuun
★★★
Ian Manook, Albin Michel, Paris, 2023, 327 pages
Out with the bad guys!
Throughout his adventures, Jack Reacher has become the very archetype of the solitary avenger and A man of his word will only reinforce the perception we already have of him. Nevertheless, the genre poses serious questions about what has become of modern society where mercenaries of all types rule the roost almost everywhere on the planet. Here, as usual, Reacher faces an impossible task; we will see him almost single-handedly confront the two mafia gangs – the Albanians on one side, the Ukrainians on the other – who control a medium-sized American city whose name we will never know. Loan sharking, prostitution, drugs, money laundering, “protection”, rackets of all kinds, the gangsters control the city and the police force through gangs; nothing to surprise anyone. Reacher will get involved in all this to help an old man who mortgaged his life to save his daughter who was a victim of cancer. After a few dozen corpses, you will probably wonder if the end always justifies the means…
Michel Bélair
A man of his word
★★ 1/2
Lee Child, translated by Elsa Marion, Calmann-Lévy, Paris, 2023, 400 page