Surprising that a British author knows the American “Deep South” so well; it is there in fact that, since Only silence — his first story published in French — RJ Ellory situates a good part of his novels. As if he loved this fertile ground for idleness of all kinds, he takes us back to Georgia with this dark story where it will be a question of sordid violence, torture and various manipulations. And to kick things off, it shows us, in the very first paragraph, Union County Sheriff Victor Landis learning of his brother’s death.
Frank Landis was also sheriff, a few hundred miles further north, more precisely in Dade County, near the border with Tennessee. But, very quickly, the reader understands that the two brothers saw each other very little, even that they hated each other profusely. We will not know the reasons for this quarrel until much later, but, for the moment, Victor has no choice but to show up in Trenton to identify his brutally murdered brother.
As soon as he arrives, Victor Landis goes from one surprise to another: he first discovers with happiness that his brother had a daughter… but above all he has the impression of falling into a sort of wasps’ nest. As soon as it comes up about the other Sheriff Landis and the cases he was working on, people shut down or become uncooperative. He is suggested to let the investigation take its course and some even allude to shady associations suggesting that his brother was a scoundrel… As he prepares to dig into the matter a little more, he is reminded to emergency in his county, where the body of a young girl has just been found.
From this macabre discovery, things quickly move into high gear since Landis will soon inherit the abused bodies of three teenage girls who appeared in counties bordering his own and will take the head of the group of sheriffs concerned. The investigation will lead him to notorious scoundrels involved in all imaginable trafficking, and all this will lead him to uncover a large-scale conspiracy and network… which his brother was beginning to tackle.
The plot is tight and full of unsuspected ramifications, but it is first of all Ellory’s characters who amaze; screaming for truth even when sketched in a single paragraph, they carry the novel throughout. This is even more true for the complex Victor Landis, who we will discover has integrity and determination whatever the adversity, but strangely obtuse and stuck in the conflict which opposed him to his brother. Add to all this a writing that breathes to the rhythm of the evolution of the investigation and its ups and downs, magnificently rendered by Fabrice Pointeau for the last time – the writer salutes him and pays tribute to him at the end of the book -, and you have another solid novel from RJ Ellory as only he knows how to do them. Again !