Revealed thanks to “Tombent lesanges”, Marlène Charine has become in a few years an essential Swiss author in the world of crime fiction. Her fifth novel, “The protégé” gives pride of place to a heroine who is as charismatic as she is immoral.
Following crucial testimony against her ex-lover, a high-flying criminal, Maddy begins a new life thanks to a protection program. She is hired as an English and agriculture teacher in an institute for children in difficulty, in a manor in the heart of the Pyrenees. But as soon as she arrives, violent deaths follow one another and Commander Theven, in charge of monitoring her, will quickly harbor suspicions towards his protégé.
Inner changes
As the saying goes, you shouldn’t trust appearances. Behind the honey-colored hair and emerald eyes of Madeleine, known as Maddy, hides an unsympathetic soul filled with darkness. As the pages progress, readers discover his past and his motivations.
Madeleine doesn’t really erase who I once was. I rather have the feeling that she is painting over a damaged canvas. Let her replace dark colors with bright touches
By rubbing shoulders with children damaged by life at the institute, Maddy reveals other, more luminous facets, even if the shadows never go away.
A part of fantasy
The thirty children who make up the institute are classified into two categories. The cynical explanation given by one of the educators to Maddy upon her arrival sets the tone. On the one hand there are the “urchins”, the children in social reintegration. On the other, the “sandwich breads”, young people with mental disorders, who absorb everything that surrounds them.
Among the “sandwich breads”, one stands out in particular: Abel, an 8-year-old autistic boy. Gifted with incredible drawing talent, the little boy claims to communicate with a mysterious “red lady”.
For Abel, everything is fragmented. The fault is these visions which assail him at any time of the day or night. Flashes sometimes filled with sweetness, but more often loaded with violence.
“The protégé” has a little touch of fantasy, a mix of genres totally embraced by Marlène Charine: “Basically, I come from the world of the imagination, I have been a big reader of fantasy since the green library, in going by Stephen King. This is found from time to time in my books”, admits the author with a smile in the QWERTZ podcast of March 27.
The She-Wolves of Polar
A chemical engineer by training, Marlène Charine started writing once her youngest son entered school. Since 2020, the Vaudoise writer has been writing dark novels. Not content with writing thrillers, Marlène Charine also writes fantastic literature, under the pseudonym Lou Majel. A project aimed at young people is also underway.
During her free time, Marlène Charine reads detective novels, “ideally French-speaking and written by women”, she specifies. “Unlike the Anglo-Saxons or the Nordics, the authors of French-speaking thrillers lack visibility, which is why several of us came together to create the collective The She-Wolves of Polar to remedy it”. The perfect opportunity to discover new ideas and new horizons.
Sarah Clement
Marlène Charine, “The protégé”, Calmann-Lévy Noir, February 2024.
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