Hard at work
Seven feet. Wearing sneakers. Floating on the Seine. The aptly named Sandrine Destombes (The Twins of Piolenc) pulls no punches with the introduction of Les Disparus de la Durance. We are immediately drawn into the investigation of Captain Vaas, recently transferred to Paris for reasons that we will discover in due time, and his disparate team which will prove (of course) as insightful as it is effective. This is necessary to answer the many questions that arise from the outset (where are the bodies? And the 8th foot… since normally, they come in pairs?) and go back in time. Because little by little a morbid series is taking shape which would have started 20 years earlier. The short chapters tumble to the rhythm of effective writing which is distinguished here by its biting, there by its scathing humor. As for the characters, they have depth and substance. We hear them and we feel them, throughout a gripping plot in which it is easy, as a reader, to get involved.
Sonia Sarfati
The missing of the Durance
★★★ 1/2
Sandrine Destombes, Hugo Thriller, Paris, 2023, 375 pages
New team
We know his inspector Héroux, we then discovered his Antoine Déry-Emma Teasdale tandem. In The weight of the years, Guillaume Morrissette introduces us to investigators Gary Demers, Paul Sioui, Mireille Tourangeau, Steve Doyon and a few others, who, between Trois-Rivières and Shawinigan, try to understand what happened to Louis-Pierre Masson. Accused of touching students, this former physical education teacher disappeared three years earlier. His body is found in a snowy park. His head, just above, held by a belt to a tree branch. Suicide? If that were the case, there would be no novel. Murder, then, there is. And several possible suspects. Just like a woman who knows too much. If we add to that personal problems and professional tensions, this Weight of years does not give a second of respite to its protagonists, who immediately come to life thanks to these larger-than-life dialogues which are part of the novelist’s signature.
Sonia Sarfati
The weight of the years
★★★
Guillaume Morrissette, Saint-Jean Éditeur, Laval, 2023, 425 pages
White on white, infinitely
Leaving his pseudonym Roy Braverman and the busy landscapes of New England where he set several of his latest novels, Ian Manook takes us this time to the Canadian Great North. In the middle of winter at minus fifty, somewhere in the early 1930s. It actually sets us on a chase of the “mad trapper of Rat River” in the midst of the worst snowstorms imaginable, bitter blizzards and an absolutely mind-blowing white-on-white void. Ten crews led by RCMP officers, a dozen volunteers, dozens of dogs — and even a plane! — track a lone man, on snowshoes; They will take almost two months to catch up with him after a race as inhuman as it is futile. Intensely true characters in a quest carried out in the name of principles that are no match, both in this sublime environment and in the drifting world of the time. A luminous piece of writing highlighting the talent of a writer who moves from one world to another denouncing the same stupid conceit.
Michel Bélair
Ravaged
★★★ 1/2
Ian Manook, Paulsen “The Big Dipper”, Paris, 2023, 349 pages
Like on TV !
We like Martin Michaud, even if he has recently spent a lot of time scriptwriting, for TV, the adventures of his star investigator Victor Lessard. How can we blame him when the great Dennis Lehane has been walking the same paths for ages… Except that here, you can feel it. A lot. In an interview a few years ago, Michaud admitted to us that he was fascinated by television writing, by its jerky rhythm and what we could call its “programmed gasps”. Well, all this deeply permeates his new story; here, not a chapter ends without a twist, or almost. Everything leads to thrilling suspense. Everything leads to drama, tension. As if it was precisely necessary to hold the attention of a spectator crushed in front of his TV. Of course, the exercise is successful: everything is constantly tumbling and the reader finds himself almost on the edge of his seat… But Martin Michaud had accustomed us to more depth, density, and various questions. And, let’s say it, with less fanfare.
Michel Bélair
Vanishing points
★★★
Martin Michaud, Libre Expression, Montreal, 2023, 469 pages