Irène: The Gripping Opening to The Paris Crime Files (The Commandant Camille Verhoeven Trilogy, 2)

Sebastian Fitzek; Translated By John Brownjohn

Marc Lucas had it all, and lost it all. He is only slowly putting his life back together after the car crash that killed his pregnant wife, when things start to go strangely wrong for him. Nothing too sinister to begin with: his credit cards stop working. But then his key no longer fits his door, and he discovers someone else working in his office. Much worse is to come: he comes home to find himself face to face with his once-dead wife, and she doesn't have a clue who he is. The next day, there is no trace of her. Could this have anything to do with the clinic? They wanted to test their ability to remove traumatic memories from live subjects. Marc had met them, just once, but declined their experimental technology. He now fears they may have begun their tests illicitly...Can he discover just what is happening to him before the waking nightmare he finds himself living overwhelms his sanity? Lire plus…

Lemaitre, Pierre

Paperback -For Commandant Verhoeven life is beautiful: he's happily married, and expecting his first child with the lovely Irene. But his blissful existence is punctured by a murder so savage that even the most hardened officers on the force are shaken to the core. In the face of the seemingly motiveless horror, only Verhoeven makes the vital connection the crime scene resembles one described in a James Ellroy novel too closely for there to be any coincidence. As the stylised murders continue, Verhoeven traces the crimes' literary inspirations, and risks his superiors' ire by taking out adverts to inform the killer of his progress. Before long, the case develops into a personal duel, with each man hell-bent on outsmarting his opponent. There can only be one winner whoever has the least to lose ... Lire plus…

Lemaitre, Pierre

UN ÉVÉNEMENT EST CONSIDÉRÉ COMME DÉCISIFLORSQU'IL DÉSAXE COMPLÈTEMENT VOTRE VIE.PAR EXEMPLE, TROIS DÉCHARGES DE FUSIL À POMPESUR LA FEMME QUE VOUS AIMEZ. »Atmosphère glaçante, écriture sèche, mécanique implacable : Pierre Lemaître a imposé son style et son talent dans l'univers du thriller. Après Alex, il achève ici une trilogie autour du commandant Verhoeven, initiée avec Travail soigné.« Lemaitre hisse le genre noir à une hauteur rarissime chez les écrivains français : celle où se tient la littérature. » Jean-Claude Buisson, Le Figaro Magazine Lire plus…

Fitzek, Sebastian

Josy, la fille de douze ans du célèbre psychiatre Viktor Larenz, souffre d'une maladie inconnue qu'aucun médecin ne parvient à diagnostiquer. Un jour, alors que son père l'accompagne chez l'un de ses confrères, elle disparaît mystérieusement...Quatre ans ont passé, et Josy n'a toujours pas donné le moindre signe de vie. Afin de surmonter ce drame, Viktor Larenz s'est retiré sur une île du nord de l'Allemagne, où il reçoit l'étrange visite d'une inconnue. Anna Spiegel, romancière, souffre d'une forme rare de schizophrénie : les personnages qu'elle invente prennent vie...Fait troublant, son dernier ouvrage raconte l'histoire d'une fillette souffrant d'une maladie inconnue qui disparaît sans laisser de trace... Aussi Viktor entreprend-il sa thérapie dans l'espoir un peu fou de découvrir la vérité sur la disparition de sa fille...L'inconcevable est-il possible ? Le récit d'Anna permettra-t-il d'élucider le mystère ? Entre flash-backs et hallucinations, le lecteur se laisse entraîner dans une atmosphère angoissante qui va crescendo. À la toute fin seulement, il comprendra qu'il s'est fait piéger par l'auteur, machiavélique et talentueux. Lire plus…

Garnier, Pascal; Boyce, Emily

‘Garnier plunges you into a bizarre, overheated world, seething death, writing, fictions and philosophy. He's a trippy, sleazy, sly and classy read.'A. L. Kennedy Bernard lives with his sister Yolande who hasn't left the house since 1945. Bernard is now in the final months of a terminal illness. With no longer anything to lose, he becomes reckless—and murderous.Locally the A26 is under construction. Concrete still wet, it stands ready to serve as a discrete cemetery for lost girls.'A brilliant exercise in grim and gripping irony, it makes you grin as well as wince.'The Sunday Telegraph'A most wonderfully wry noir murder mystery you'll not soon forget.'—Durango Herald'Garnier's sly, cynical take on life will strike a chord with readers of every age.'—Publishers Weekly'Ultimately a very dark novel, but a very impressive one.'—The Complete Review Lire plus…

Lemaitre, Pierre

MEET COMMANDANT CAMILLE VERHOEVEN OF THE PARIS POLICE WITH NOTHING ELSE TO LOSE Anne Forestier finds herself in the wrong place at the wrong time when she blunders into a raid on a jeweller's on the Champs-Élysées. Bludgeoned beyond recognition, she is lucky to survive. But her ordeal has only just begun. HE CAN BREAK ALL THE RULES Lying helpless in her hospital bed, with her assailant still at large, Anne is in mortal danger. Only one thing gives her hope: Commandant Camille Verhœven. TO PROTECT THE WOMAN HE LOVES For Verhœven it's a case of history repeating itself. He cannot lose Anne as he lost his wife. This time he faces an adversary whose greatest strength appears to be Verhœven's matchless powers of intuition. Winner of the 2015 C.W.A. International Dagger Lire plus…

Lemaitre, Pierre

Anne Forestier finds herself in the wrong place at the wrong time when she blunders into a raid on a jewellers on the Champs-Élysées. Shot three times, beaten almost beyond recognition, she is lucky to survive, but her ordeal has only just begun. Lying helpless in her hospital bed, with her assailant still at large, Anne is in grave danger. Just one thing stands in her favour - a partner who will break all the rules to protect the woman he loves: Commandant Camille Verhoeven. For Verhoeven it's a case of history repeating. He cannot lose Anne as he lost his wife Irène. But his serious breach of protocol - leading a case in which he is intimately involved - leaves him out on a limb, unable to confide in even his most trusted lieutenants. And this time he is facing an adversary whose greatest strength appears to be Verhoeven's own matchless powers of intuition. Lire plus…

Lemaitre, Pierre

"À la fin de décembre 1999, une surprenante série d’événements tragiques s’abattit sur Beauval, au premier rang desquels, bien sûr, la disparition du petit Rémi Desmedt.Dans cette région couverte de forêts, soumise à des rythmes lents, la disparition soudaine de cet enfant provoqua la stupeur et fut même considérée, par bien des habitants, comme le signe annonciateur des catastrophes à venir.Pour Antoine, qui fut au centre de ce drame, tout commença par la mort du chien..." Lire plus…

Lemaitre, Pierre

on fait la connaissance du Commandant Camille Verhoeven, 1m45, et le crâne chauve. Il est amené Г enquêter avec son équipe sur des crimes atroces commis sur des femmes en proche banlieue de Paris. De fil en aiguille, il s'avère que le tueur, être pervers s'il en est, reconstitue des crimes de romans policiers comme Le dahlia noir de James Ellroy, American Psycho de Bret Easton Ellis ou Le crime d'Orcival d'Emile Gaboriau. Dans cette intrigue menée de main de maître, vous êtes happé par l'histoire. Cet écrivain est diabolique. Il faut noter que les romans ne se terminent pas en "happy end", bien au contraire. Lire plus…

Lemaitre, Pierre

Alex, une jeune femme de 35 ans, belle et attirante, essaie des perruques dans un magasin du boulevard de Strasbourg. Quelques heures plus tard, elle est enlevée par un inconnu qui la suivait, jetée dans une camionnette et séquestrée dans un hangar désaffecté. Le ravisseur a organisé sur place un théâtre de tortures qu'elle va subir jusqu'à l'horreur. Alex parvient à se libérer avant que la police ne la retrouve, et n'identifie son tortionnaire, suicidé sur le périphérique. Dès lors, l'énigme d'Alex et de son passé ne peut plus lâcher le lecteur, qui la découvre du point de vue de la victime et de ses bourreaux, jusqu'au terme d'une tragédie imprévisible et fatale. Il est impossible d'en dévoiler davantage sans déflorer une intrigue d'une intelligence et d'une construction diaboliques qui touchent à la perfection. L'écrivain se révèle dans le ton et le style du récit (d'une feinte impassibilité) à l'image du commandant Verhoeven, le flic qui élucide la tragédie d'Alex, d'une attachante complexité. Pierre Lemaître, qui déclare "je ne cherche à écrire que des livres qu'Hitchcock aurait voulu filmer", porte à son comble, sans le moindre artifice ni trucage, l'art du suspense et de la peur. Lire plus…

Lemaitre, Pierre

EVERYTHING YOU KNOW ABOUT HER IS WRONG In kidnapping cases, the first few hours are crucial. After that, the chances of being found alive go from slim to nearly none. Alex Prévost - beautiful, resourceful, tough - may be no ordinary victim, but her time is running out. Commandant Camille Verhoeven and his detectives have nothing to go on: no suspect, no lead, rapidly diminishing hope. All they know is that a girl was snatched off the streets of Paris and bundled into a white van. The enigma that is the fate of Alex will keep Verhoeven guessing until the bitter, bitter end. And before long, saving her life will be the least of his worries. Lire plus…

Lemaitre, Pierre

EVERYTHING YOU KNOW ABOUT HER IS WRONG In kidnapping cases, the first few hours are crucial. After that, the chances of being found alive go from slim to nearly none. Alex Prévost - beautiful, resourceful, tough - may be no ordinary victim, but her time is running out. Commandant Camille Verhoeven and his detectives have nothing to go on: no suspect, no lead, rapidly diminishing hope. All they know is that a girl was snatched off the streets of Paris and bundled into a white van. The enigma that is the fate of Alex will keep Verhoeven guessing until the bitter, bitter end. And before long, saving her life will be the least of his worries. Lire plus…

Lemaitre, Pierre

Sophie is haunted by the things she can't remember - and visions from the past she will never forget. One morning, she wakes to find that the little boy in her care is dead. She has no memory of what happened. And whatever the truth, her side of the story is no match for the evidence piled against her. Her only hiding place is in a new identity. A new life, with a man she has met online. But Sophie is not the only one keeping secrets . . . For fans of Gone Girl and Lemaitre's own internationally bestselling Alex, Blood Wedding is a compelling psychological thriller with a formidable female protagonist. Translated from the French by Frank Wynne Lire plus…

Lemaitre, Pierre; Wynne, Frank

Winner of the prestigious Prix Goncourt, a timeless story of how war transforms lives in unexpected and often tragic ways as seen through the eyes of three World War I vets The year is 1918, the war on the Western Front all but over. An ambitious officer, Lieutenant Henry D'Aulnay-Pradelle, sends two soldiers over the top and then surreptitiously shoots them in the back to incite his men to attack the German lines. When another of D'Aulnay-Pradelle's soldiers, Albert Maillard, reaches the bodies and discovers how they died, the lieutenant shoves him into a shell hole to silence him. Albert is rescued by fellow soldier, the artist Edouard Péricourt, who takes a bullet in the face. The war ends and both men recover, but Edouard is permanently disfigured, and fakes his death to prevent his family from seeing him as a cripple. In gratitude for Edouard's rescue, Albert becomes the injured man's companion and caregiver. Finding that the postwar gratitude for the soldiers' service is nothing more than lip-service to an empty idea, the two men scramble to survive, ultimately devising a scam to take money for never-to-be-built war memorials from small towns. Meanwhile, Lieutenant Pradelle has married Edouard's sister Madeline and is running a scam of his own that involves the exhumation of war victims. In this sorrowful, heart-searching novel, the interwoven lives of these three men create a tapestry of the human condition as seen through the lens of war, revealing brutality and... Lire plus…

Vargas, Fred; Reynolds, Siân

THE NEW INSPECTOR ADAMSBERG NOVEL A woman is found murdered in her bathtub, and the murder made to look like a suicide. A strange symbol is found near the body. Then a second victim is discovered, who was also part of a group of tourists on a doomed expedition to Iceland ten years earlier. How are these deaths, and rumours of an Icelandic demon, linked to the secretive Association for the Study of the Writings of Maximilien Robespierre? And what does the mysterious symbol signify? Commissaire Adamsberg is about to find out. Lire plus…

Vargas, Fred

Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg is not like other policemen. His methods appear unorthodox in the extreme: he doesn’t search for clues; he ignores obvious suspects and arrests people with iron-clad alibis; he appears permanently distracted.The Chalk Circle Man is the first book featuring Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg, one of the most engaging characters in contemporary detective fiction.When strange, blue chalk circles start appearing overnight on the pavements of Paris, the press take up the story with amusement and psychiatrists trot out their theories. Adamsberg is alone in thinking this is not a game and far from amusing. He insists on being kept informed of new circles and the increasingly bizarre objects which they contain: empty beer cans, four trombones, a pigeon’s foot, four cigarette lighters, a badge proclaiming “I Love Elvis,” a hat, a doll’s head. Adamsberg senses the cruelty that lies behind these seemingly random occurrences. Soon a circle with decidedly less banal contents is discovered: the body of a woman with her throat savagely cut. Adamsberg knows that other murders will follow <div class="bookitem Lire plus…

Lemaitre, Pierre

Después de Irène y Alex , llega la tercera entrega de la serie del comisario Camille Verhoeben, por el autor ganador de un premio Goncourt, de dos Dagger Awards, del Premio de Novela Negra Europea y del Permio Best Novel Valencia Negra, con más de medio millón de lectores. El dilema del comandante Camille Verhoeben. Jean Garnier es un joven solitario que lo ha perdido todo: su trabajo, tras la muerte misteriosa de su jefe; su novia, en un extraño accidente, y Rosie, su madre y principal apoyo, que ha sido encarcelada. Para dar rienda suelta a su dolor, planea hacer explotar siete obuses, uno por día, en distintos puntos de la geografía francesa. Después del primer estallido se entrega a la policía. Su única condición para evitar la catástrofe es la liberación de su madre. El comisario Verhoeben se encuentra ante un gran dilema: ¿es Jean un lunático con delirios de grandeza o una verdadera amenaza para todo el país? Reseñas: «Maravilloso libro. Obra de gran plasticidad visual, desborda carisma y riqueza de sensaciones, recursos y precisión mecánica, la misma que en el resto de su obra. Leerlo es uno de los grandes placeres privados contemporáneos.» Ramón Ventura, El Periódico de Catalunya «Lemaitre disfruta de lo lindo rompiendo convenciones y jugando con ellas porque las conoce bien y maneja los géneros con la habilidad de un prestidigitador. [...] Un fantástico experimento de literatura recreativa con perturbado al fondo.» Javier Aparicio Maydeu, ... Lire plus…

Lemaitre, Pierre

El Final De La Tetralogía Protagonizada Por El Comandante Camille Verhoeven, La Serie Más Apasionante De Los últimos Años, Ganadora Del Prestigioso Dagger Award De Novela Negra. «un Acontecimiento Se Considera Decisivo Cuando Desbarata Nuestras Vidas Por Completo. Por Ejemplo, Tres Disparos De Una Escopeta De Repetición Sobre La Mujer Que Uno Ama.» Anne Forestier Queda Atrapada En Medio De Un Atraco A Una Joyería En Los Campos Elíseos. Tras Recibir Una Paliza Que La Deja Al Borde De La Muerte, Tiene La Suerte De Sobrevivir... Y La Condena De Haber Visto La Cara Del Asaltante. Su Vida Corre Un Grave Peligro, Pero Anne Cuenta Con La Ayuda Del Hombre Al Que Ama: El Comandante Camille Verhoeven. Este Estará Dispuesto A Actuar Al Margen De La Ley Con Tal De Protegerla. Pero ¿quién Es Ese Enemigo, Y Por Qué Ese Empeño Tan Feroz En Acabar Con Anne? La Atmósfera Y La Escritura Escalofriantes De Este Final De La Tetralogía Confirman Una Vez Más El Increíble Talento De Pierre Lemaitre. Reseñas: «una De Esas Novelas Que Son Sencillamente Brutales.» Elle «el Lector Pierde El Aliento Tras Ese Hombre Cuya Escasa Estatura Está En Proporción Indirecta Con Su Asombrosa Inteligencia... Lo Que Hace A Lemaitre-verhoeven Genial, Es Decir, Diferente, Es Su Mezcla De Inteligencia Y Ternura, De Ironía Y Nostalgia, Alguien A Quien Nada Humano Le Puede Ser Ajeno.» Sagrario Fernández-prieto, La Razón «una Trama En La Que Se Vuelve A Ver Lo Mejor De Lemaitre: Calidad Literaria, Ritmo, Control Del... Lire plus…