The Watchmaker is a lively, suspenseful novel, seeking first to be effective, like a James Bond. The book takes us from Brussels to the Provençal village of Gourdon where the author has a house, from New York to Patagonia.
Jérémie Claes takes us just as vividly through time, in short chapters, from Auschwitz in 1944 and the horrible Doctor Mengele to today, the era of Trump and Macron, whom he mentions by name in his book.
Jacob Dreyfus is at the center of the novel. Grandson of Adam Dreyfus who disappeared in Auschwitz, he is a journalist who has infiltrated for the needs of his investigation into the American extreme right, a neo-Nazi and anti-Semitic supremacist militia in the United States, the Ayran Bloodto the point of arresting and convicting the two leaders who look like Trump and Steve Bannon. He receives the Pulitzer Prize for this, but the white extreme right wants his skin and murders his wife.
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For his safety, Jacob Dreyfus must then disappear and takes refuge under a false name with his son in the small village of Gourdon, protected day and night by Bernard Solane, a friendly and epicurean old cop.
The Murderous Car
But ten years later, on the night of December 31, 2018, his son, his father and his aunt mysteriously die, at the same time, in three distant places, and in three very different ways. Jérémie Claes even imagines a murder of the father that would make you shudder: his Tesla falls under the control of a mysterious hacker who makes it deviate from its route and fall from the top of a bridge!
Why these deaths ten years later? Jacob Dreyfus, flanked by Bernard Solane, then the bosses of the French and American PJ investigate.
guillementThis improbable chaos resembles life itself.
The story of Mengele and grandfather Dreyfus at Auschwitz regularly comes up in the book. Jacob finds himself in Brussels with the one who was called the Master of Machinesa young, enlightened but ultra-gifted person who dominates global big data. He also meets the Scorpionin charge of dirty work.
Jérémie Claes addresses, through his thriller, the danger of conspiracy theorists, the threat of hackers, racism and anti-Semitism, the shadow of Trump. We will say nothing more about a skillfully maintained suspense. The identity of theWatchmaker, who has been leading this secret global conspiracy for years that often decides our death, is only revealed at the very end of the book.
Starting with a plausible story, with realistic facts, the story turns towards science fiction and unbridled fantasy at the end.
A wildly imaginative first novel, with rich, well-defined characters to give us a few hours of gripping reading, filled with thrills.
⇒ The Watchmaker | Thriller | Jérémie Claes | Éditions Héloïse d’Ormesson, 458 pp. €22.90, digital €16
EXTRACT
“The Master is a precious man because his skill is unique and irreplaceable, but above all because he is discreet. His entire universe is made of secrets and he knows their value. He does not know who his client is, not exactly. He has never tried to find out and if the other knows the identity of the Master of Machines, it is because the latter has been willing to reveal it to him. These two form a united and inseparable couple.”
