With his new novel, Steve Laflamme follows the vein of the secret code thriller that he brilliantly developed in The Lambs of Dawn. We still shudder, while thinking.
Guillaume Volta, investigator at the Sûreté du Québec, and literature professor Frédérique Santinelli emerged deeply affected by their latest adventures. To the point that it is better to have read these as long as Twenty-three days of hatred multiplies the references there.
A year and a half later, they will once again be plunged into a horror story like no other.
A stranger left a curious package at Santinelli’s door: a handmade book titled The Tityos calendar. It is made up of 23 stories describing different ways of killing a woman through torture. The professor is repulsed… and the reader fears she will be too!
Fortunately, Steve Laflamme does not exploit the details of the calendar. Rather, he uses it to denounce domestic violence, the real theme of his novel.
Santinelli quickly spotted that this calendar is full of clues linked to the high-profile disappearance of Caroline Généreux, which occurred two years earlier. Does this mean we could find her?
So she contacts her friend Volta to put him on the trail – starting by helping him identify who signed the work. This author demonstrates solid erudition: the references to Greek mythology are numerous and each story ends with a sentence whose meaning must be dissected.
We will quickly learn who it is, which will not come without surprises.
And he doesn’t just write! The reader sees him at work while the police search for him. He developed a Machiavellian plan to bring the men who attacked Caroline Généreux to the same place, then let them kill each other.
Demons that resurface
Of course, Volta and Santinelli will end up flushing out the abominations covered in the scenarios developed by this discreet… and not so clear-cut avenger. But along the way, they will face their own demons.
Parts of Santinelli’s past will be revealed in particular. In The Lambs of Dawn, we knew that at the age of 18, she had undergone treatment which had erased her memory. Twenty years later, people still have an interest in her not finding her.
However, she ends up learning that this is linked to medical violence imposed on indigenous women. Even with this parallel plot, Steve Laflamme therefore stays the course: his harsh thriller has assumed social foundations.
It is also interesting that the questioning about domestic violence is carried out by the investigator Volta. His relationship is in trouble, while his investigation forces him to question the tipping point that leads men towards hatred when nothing is going well with their partner.
This results in an intense novel of cruelty, reflections… and metaphors! Steve Laflamme does indeed have a signature.
