What is this new blockbuster thriller?

Maxime Chattam's book, released on October 30, 2024, plays with the idea of ​​a hostage-taking live during a television news show.

French novelist Maxime Chattam is back in bookstores with a strong work with an intriguing premise. In Prime Timereleased by Albin Michel on October 30, 2024, a star presenter of the 8 p.m. news is taken hostage by a mysterious masked man, who forces the channel to stay on the air under penalty of executing the journalist.

In this new thriller, Maxime Chattam uses the forced race against time and the short narrative time to talk about the media, power games, journalism and sensationalism without forgetting the classic and expected springs of the thriller, between pretenses and false leads. The book rose to second place in the rankings Weekly Books and confirms the popularity of the author, a symbol of French crime fiction for several years now.

Between fantasy and thriller

If Maxime Chattam quickly distinguished himself in the thriller genre with his book series The Evil Trilogy (Michel Laffont), at the beginning of the 2000s, he has since distinguished himself in other genres, including fantasy with his great saga Otherworldwhich has eight books and uses several symbols from fantasy literature.

With the series The Cycle of Man and TruthMaxime Chattam addresses the cultural and political concern around mass disinformation and conspiracy — approaching certain themes of Prime Time — while retaining this incisive and breathtaking writing, giving the thriller its rhythm and intensity.

An intensity that is also found in his independent novels, with more than ten works written since 2003 between sagas and literary series. In 2023, Maxime Chattam comes out Lux (Albin Michel), a powerful work paying homage to the style of René Barjavel, a year after having offered, in 2022, his character of lieutenant Ludivine Vanker a fourth volume, The Constancy of the Predator (Albin Michel).

Prolific, Maxime Chattam has published more than 30 books, selling a total of more than seven million copies.