Irene - Pierre LeMaitre

Following on in the UK is this translation from the original French by Frank Wynne and it's a good one.

The first section of the book gives detail of the difference to the French judicial system to the English. In France a judge can be allocated as part of the investigating team to a particular crime. When the case gets to court the judge is part of the prosecuting team rather than on the bench. After being part of a team against a defendant the judge is not allowed to act as judge at any time in the future against this person.

Despite th fact that this is the second book in the UK it is the predecessor to Alex which proved amazingly popular.

This means that those people that have read Alex have an idea of the ending. I was one of them. I did skip straight to the end to confirm and also to get what was likely to be extreme gruesomeness out of the way.

Then it was back to the beginning retaining the uncomfortable knowledge of the ending. Or so I thought.

The police team consists of the diminutive Commandant Camille VerHoeven (male) and his subordinates, Louis- extremely rich and Armand, extremely frugal, embarassingly so and Maleval, the gambler. All of them overseen by LeGuen.

Someone is killing women. they're leaving behind a clue in the form of a fingerprint and sending messages to VerHoeven to taunt him. As well as investigating he has to deal with the press who are ahead of the press releases somehow. Commandant is spending more time than is ideal batting away press hassle and his boss demanding answers.

At the same time he's trying to keep his family situation sane as his wife prepares to give birth to their first child.

Clues accumulate on the murders and gain attention of locals who are able to help. This all muddies the waters as far as suspects are concerned.

Multiple murders and multiple strands to the investigation alongside the main players relationships make a very entertaining book and a book well worth reading even if you've read Alex.

All of this culminates in one humdinger of an ending which hits the reader full on towards the end. I can definitely see this one as an excellent film. Tom Cruise would make a perfect VerHoeven :)
Buy it here

Publisher - MacLehose

Alex - Pierre LeMaitre

I admit I'm late to the party with this one. I missed the speeches, the drunken uncle and had the room to myself to enjoy the atmosphere.

Nearly to myself. I was joined by a very short detective, a very suave, very rich, almost savant detective, an amazingly frugal detective and their avuncular boss.

The case revolves around the search for Alex (female) who's been kidnapped. No-one knows who she is, no-one's reported her missing. A witness saw her taken so it's the job of Camille (male) and his two sidekicks to try and find her before it's too late.

It's been translated from the original French and I knew before starting that their crime fiction can be particularly graphic. It is here as well, but no more so than some of our homegrown writers.

The book's in three parts and is a roller coaster of a ride, good enough to send me to the shop for the second in the series, Irene.

The three detectives read in an interwoven way, feeding lines from each other, tolerating each other and being frustrated. A particular favourite theme of mine in the book is the character of Armand. You can almost see the incredulity on the faces of those that don't know him, the forbearance of those who work closely with him and the hidden anger of those he gently cons.

The only downside was when some digital photographs were found and still no-one knew a location. Is that still possible on digital? I thought the image data gave the game away on every amateur thanks to google.

Aside from that, stuck with it, loved it and am definitely taking my place at the pre-launch party next time!