It’s a closed door reminiscent of the famous film Police custody (1981) by Claude Miller: an inspector here is called Bremond, a name close to that of Inspector Belmont played by Guy Marchand in the film, who like Lino Ventura uses the expression “my poor old man” to the suspect’s address.
Alexandre Arditti, from Aix, carries out a dizzying investigation into the heart of the questions of our time relating to the limitless race for technological progress. He imagines the fictional assassination of Mark Zuckerberg, the highly publicized founder and CEO of Facebook, executed with a bullet to the head. There we find face to face Pierre Gerbier, a temperamental commissioner nicknamed Pierrot or La Gerbe, and a certain Franck Travis, a fifty-year-old American known as “the poet”, who allegedly acted on behalf of a mysterious terrorist organization called Table Rase.
“We have the time we deserve”
Endowed with a great temperament, the two protagonists are not brainless illiterates either: “The day the society you live in shames you too much, leave it “, says the suspect to the cultured cop, who thinks that it is a thought of Schopenhauer and not of him. “Ona the time we deserve“, the alleged murderer later added, like a mantra. “Existence is a soap bubble. An apprenticeship. Learning a certain solitude“, he will say again, before explaining his point of view on literature: “Writing is a bit like organizing a fight, or rather a verbal joust, between heroes who resemble us and enemies who also resemble us. […] Literature is about making contact with others, or at least trying to do so. To transmit recalcitrant emotions that remain stuck in the chest or throat.“
If Alexandre Arditti is not a great stylist, it is clear that he is an excellent storyteller, a gifted screenwriter, an effective dialogue writer and his thriller, despite a slightly improbable ending, is a real good read. L’assassinat de Mark Zuckerberg which could be called “appearances are deceiving” can be read in one go with real pleasure.
The Assassination of Mark Zuckerberg by Alexandre Arditti. Editions The Silk Road. 147 pages, €17.
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