René Manzor, a former filmmaker, has created a very visual detective novel which takes the form of a chase across Europe.
René Manzor’s new thriller is a formidable splits exercise for the reader. On the one hand, limitless violence is described without embellishment. On the other we see the very cool daily life of a Parisian French family.
On the violence side, it begins with an attack in the middle of the Colombian jungle. Dozens killed in train derailment. Then on the Vercors plateau, gendarmes found the body of a child: “Chained to the wall by the dog collar he wore around his neck, lay a little half-naked seven-year-old boy, in an improbable posture. […] Blood was flowing from his mouth and nose. » This is the third victim of an elusive serial killer.
Europol takes over the case and puts Wim Haag in charge of the hunt. In contrast, we discover the little worries of Marion Scriba, French novelist, mother of three children, recently divorced. She has to manage her three kids (including a teenager…) while she has been struggling for too long with the last chapter of her next thriller. A quiet and serene life.
So why is the writer’s DNA found at the three crime scenes? Do these executions have a link to his past as an activist in Colombia? Having become suspect number 1, she manages to escape from the investigating judge’s office and begins a run across Europe to try to save the other little innocents.
Paris, Marseille, Genoa, The Hague, Lausanne, Luxembourg, René Manzor does not count the kilometers and the twists and turns in this thriller as eventful as a chase in an American blockbuster. A sense of direction for a writer who has obviously not forgotten that he began by directing films, including the renowned Le passage with Alain Delon.
“The Shadow of the Innocents” by René Manzor, Calmann-Lévy, 368 pages, €21.50
