par Christine Ferniot, Frédérique Roussel, Théodore Your Tongues et Sabrina Champenois
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With Théodore Dillerin from the Comptoir des mots bookstore, in the 20th arrondissement of Paris, the Libé Polar team has put together a list of 50 thrillers covering the 50 states of America. On the eve of a crucial presidential election for the future of the United States and the planet, it seemed important to us to highlight a genre that allows us to better understand the world today. This list of thrillers is necessarily subjective, we had to make drastic choices, but the whole tells a fantastic story of the fractures in American society, the ever-present racism, the rise in violence, social inequalities but also the sublime landscapes , opportunities for those who dare to try their luck. The American dream in short, or what’s left of it.
Idaho
The grandiose landscapes of Kimi Cunningham Grant
Kimi Cunningham Grant, author noted for the Silence of the Repentants et Resentments and the earthtakes us, with this third novel, into the wild nature of Idaho, a state located in the northwest of the United States. Emlyn is a young mountain guide organizing fishing trips for wealthy Americans looking to reconnect with nature. She lives as an exile in the middle of these landscapes as grandiose as they are disturbing in order to forget a painful past, integrating as best as she can with the local people. While she is just managing to build a more or less balanced life, an ex-companion and a friend from whom she had moved away, who has since become a star on social networks, appear. Having gone hiking in the region, it suddenly disappears. Determined to find her, Emlyn takes us alongside her on winding paths and warns us: “People who like to believe that nature is nothing but beauty and harmony are wrong. You just have to spend enough time there to know that.” Get lost or disappear, the two verbs which give the novel its title will then take on their full meaning, both on a personal and intimate level and on a geographical level. Kimi Cunningham Grant writes a novel on the border of thriller and nature writing which questions the complexity of human relationships. Th.D.
Kimi Cunningham Grant, Get lost or disappear, translated by Alice Delarbre, Buchet-Chastel, 2024, 496 pp., €24.
Montana
The Losers by James Crumley
Born in Texas, died in 2008 in Montana, in this literary den that is Missoula, James Crumley always told the story of the America of losers. In Sweet madnesswe find Chauncey Wayne Sughrue, a Vietnam veteran converted to a ponytailed private detective specializing in the search for missing persons and living in Meriwether (town in Montana, a transfer from Missoula). A robbed psychologist friend (and a big check) convinces him to accept an investigation that will take him across the United States, across the Atlantic, to Scotland. In its wake, a surge of violence (from simple violence to murder, including rape and torture) and the uncovering of dark sides which will ultimately weigh down our man. Fortunately, CW never strays too far from a bar or a pack of beers, always has a joint on hand, even some amphetes… All in all, a thriller-western punctuated with bravura pieces that play on verisimilitude like this nocturnal episode in a remote farm where, after unnerving a few guys, CW meets a sort of Ma Dalton in a wheelchair, ex-taekwondo champion. From vintage Crumley to the panache of a freedman, where ferocity does not prohibit joy despite the fundamentally depressive observation of the affair – “America is a great place, isn’t it? You can buy dynamite there as easily as drugs, and to set it off you just need firecrackers and kitchen timers.” S.Ch.
James Crumley, Sweet madness, translated by Jacques Mailhos, Gallmeister, 416 pp., €24.80.
Wyoming
The Sioux by Craig Johnson
For almost twenty years, Craig Johnson has been portraying Wyoming, the mountains and the windy plains that his sheriff Walt Longmire roams in his old pickup truck. From his first novel, Little Birdwe sympathized with this cop who takes his time. In this sixteenth investigation, the last fightCraig Johnson immerses readers in General Custer’s last battle against the Sioux during the Black Hills War, with the story of Cassily Adams’ painting Custer’s Last Fight. The original is said to have disappeared in a fire and yet the sheriff finds himself with a painting which could well be similar to this legendary work. This is Craig Johnson’s opportunity to delve into the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876, the defeat of General Custer and the great history of America. But the novelist does not impose an official lesson on us, he remains a thriller author who mixes saloon fights, trafficking of all kinds and evenings at the bistro. Ch.F.
Craig Johnson, the Last Fight, translated by Sophie Aslanides, Gallmeister, 416 pp., €24.90.
South Dakota
Native Americans by David Heska Wanbli Weiden
“Tribal police were required to report all crimes to federal investigators, who rarely pursued prosecutions. Only high-profile cases or violent crimes merited legal action. But classic sexual assaults, thefts and assaults were most often ignored. And the trash knew it. The rapists could attack Indian women as long as they wanted, as long as they operated on Indian land. When the justice system failed them, people came to me. For a few hundred dollars, they were a little revenged. It was my contribution to justice.” On the Rosebud Indian Reservation, in South Dakota, where the federal state does not stick its nose, Virgil Wounded Horse gets paid to deliver justice in place of a failing administration. As a new drug begins to wreak havoc in his community and reaches his own nephew in his care, Virgil is determined to trace the chain and punish those responsible. Himself from the Lakota tribe settled in the Dakota reserves, David Heska Wanbli Weiden interweaves ethnology and detective intrigue. He manages to probe his characters with great humanity and relates the way in which drugs are wreaking havoc in the United States, particularly in Native American communities. Indian justice also addresses the question, without caricature, of the rites and civil rights of Native Americans in the United States. A first dark and social novel acclaimed by critics and praised by Louise Erdrich and Craig Johnson. Th.D.
David Heska Wanbli Weiden, Indian justice, translated by Sophie Aslanides, Gallmeister/Totem, 2022, 384 pp., €10.80.
North Dakota
The Ojibwe of Louise Erdrich
The snow continued to fall in the winter of 1912, and the Ojibwe Indians died one after the other from famine or from starvation. “spotting disease from the south”. Soon, the sparse tribe will have to cede its forests and its lake, which is sure to sow discord among them. Nanapush, an old Indian from this eponymous clan, a great hunter, will oppose it to the end. He saved Fleur as a young girl, the last of the Pillagers, when her family was killed by illness. To prevent her land from being taken, Fleur stays in Matchimanito’s family cabin by the lake. The heroine of Louise Erdrich’s new novel, Femina Prize 2023 with the Sentenceis this beautiful Indian from the Pillager clan, who we fear to court: “It was obvious that Misshepeshu, the man of the lake, the monster of the waters, wanted her all to himself.” Seen as endowed with powers and an uncompromising personality, she has extraordinary courage and composure; no one will risk it except Eli Kashpaw. It is Nanapush who relates Fleur’s story to her own daughter, who has become his own granddaughter, alternating with other voices. We cannot guess, if we do not know it, that Louise Erdrich woven together to Like footsteps in the snow two novels written twenty years apart: a breath of freedom and independence comparable to Dalva irrigates it. F.R.
