Meeting – Christophe Royer and his “Decomposed Family”, an award-winning thriller

Benjamin Touillon, the bookseller who manages “De deux chose lune” rue de la République in Montceau-les Mines, likes to put himself in the skin of the character, especially when he welcomes Christophe Royer, the novelist who brings Commander Nathalie Lesage to life in his thrillers. So he's going to give the author a hard time. Here, I'm the one asking the questions!

Nathalie Lesage was born in Montceau-les-Mines but she is a pure police officer born from the imagination of the native of Creusot who lives in Gautherets in Saint-Vallier and works in Lyon.

Nathalie, a fashionable name in the 80s, without going as far as Red Square, sails from Paris to Lyon in the midst of atrocious assassinations and esoteric environments. Christophe Royer's heroine is therefore back in the City of Lights in a new thriller, “Decomposed Family” which received the Lyon-Polar Dora-Suarez 2024 prize on Sunday. “It's my first major prize” comments Tuesday evening the author at the Montcellian bookstore who crowns a novelist with overflowing inspiration.

Benjamin Touillon therefore conducted a “robust” interrogation, seeking to extract the whole truth from the mouth of the author of the thriller.

What is your style of thriller? “It’s a story with a basic investigation where I take the reader into original universes. I spend months doing research which allows me to meet people as guardian of the Loyasse cemetery in Lyon. I like history, esotericism. I would like to point out that I am not a writer but a novelist. In Decomposed Family, we find ourselves at the grave of Master Philippe, he has been dead for 125 years. He was a medium who was considered the successor of Jesus Christ. Even today.”

This is the fourth time that Nathalie Lesage appears in your thrillers, who is she? “She was born in Montceau-les-Mines, she is 33/34 years old, today she lives in an apartment in the 6th district of Lyon. She had a complicated childhood, went to the Autun Military High School before following the course to become a police officer. As for her family situation, I can't reveal everything, but she is quite alone. We see its evolution through the four novels.”

His character then? “Nathalie Lesage is endearing, she does as she pleases, she is Cartesian. She is therefore endearing as readers say. She devotes her whole life to her work. “He’s a hard-headed person racing to find out the truth.”

What is its future? “She is not part of the next thriller which will not be set in Lyon either. In the other novels, there are open endings, characters who disappear, there is something to bounce back from. The next novel is finished, it takes place near Aix-en-Provence with a guy on a barge who wants to kill five people gathered in a photo.

J.B.

“The Decomposed Family”, the latest novel by Christophe Royer, is published by Taurnada. Undoubtedly the last because the author is looking for a new, more daring publishing house.