After The Little Girl at the Lighthouse last year and The Missing of Belle-Île Christophe Ferré takes us into a new thriller which takes place in Brittany: The Drowned Woman of Carnac.
Is your new novel, like the previous one, inspired by a true story?
As a child, I spent my holidays in Carnac (Morbihan). One stormy day, a majestic sailboat called the Barbara is embedded on the rocks of Légenèse beach. The crowd gathered and people were crying. This poignant scene shocked me. The Drowned Woman of Carnac opens with this painful memory, but it’s only a starting point. In my thriller, not far from the boat, we find the corpse of a young girl, Sophie, strapped with a life jacket. However, she is a very good swimmer and, astonishingly, the survivors of the wrecked boat claim not to know her, even though they are wearing the same life jacket as her. Investigators perform an autopsy: she drowned. Due to a lack of evidence, the police consider it an accident and close the case. Revolted, the dead woman’s father assumes that she was killed and decides to investigate himself…
Do the Celtic legends of Carnac have a link with the death of the young girl?
This is the question that the reader inevitably asks: Sophie is an archaeologist specializing in megaliths, she is looking for burials that have never been discovered. The shipwreck took place during the March equinox, a sacred day for the Druids who practiced human sacrifices. The father investigates to find out if the passengers on the boat have not engaged in a demonic ritual. Quite quickly, he realizes that his daughter may have been the victim of a conspiracy, but the suspects are everywhere and nowhere, leading to an outcome that no one expects.
What is your intimate relationship with Carnac and Brittany?
I have always been fascinated by megaliths: dolmens, menhirs, tumulus. They are as mysterious as the statues on Easter Island. During prehistory, Carnac was the capital of an empire which extended over part of Europe. My thriller is a dive into this esoteric world, a tribute to Brittany and its secrets which go back to the dawn of time. As the historian Jacques Cambry, founder of the Celtic Academy, said: “Each region has its madness, Brittany has them all. » As an author, I am amazed by this land of excess, storms and beauty.
The Drowned Woman of Carnaceditions of the Archipel (€21)
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