Snow White, everyone knows. Noire-Neige, less, where then a plane dropped fuel oil, no luck if you were below. It is also the title of the latest Rhenish investigation, a collection of thrillers published by Verger, an Alsatian publisher. We are in November 1959, in a small sub-prefecture near Colmar. 1959, come on, let’s dive back into it, what were we listening to?
Fidel Castro becomes 1st Minister in Cuba, beginning of the Algerian War, the Common Market is created, premises of the EEC, the Saarland returns to the German fold. So much for the big story. Music maestro, that too, it was released in 1959
And the little story, that of this book? Ariane Périllos is a young and beautiful singer from Provence. She married Aloïs Bernhardt, a widowed textile industrialist who gives work to the whole valley. Giving up her career and her name, she became the new “Madame Alois”. it’s written Aloïs, but in Alsatian, it’s pronounced àliis, or even àllisi. Ariane, let’s not lose the thread, raises her young son between her absent husband, her stepdaughter Sieglinde, a blonde teenager born from the first marriage of Alois, and her own stepmother, the matriarch of the clan who never saw him. really accepted.
When Sieglinde is found shot dead on the grave of her mother, thus the first wife of Alois, the absent husband, the whole town goes into turmoil. A tense story in post-war Alsace, between secrets and pretense. The investigation promises to be difficult for an examining magistrate, and for his secretary, who tell us this story like an Alsatian Miss Marple. The thriller is written by the brilliant Florence Hugodot, the first woman in France to join the prefectural body, in 1974 in Ribeauvillé, before becoming a magistrate and then a lawyer. Florence Hugodot who had already spoiled us with Vosgial Killer, a thriller with a murder in a hiking group, Vosgial Killer, like her novelty Noire Neige, still at the Orchard, it’s still 10 € at your favorite bookstore.
Find the novel on the publisher’s website.