She has a rather caustic sense of humor and he is rather candid; he eats healthy, preferably vegetarian, when she reheats prepared meals in the microwave or hurriedly swallows sandwiches; she doesn't like his appearance, while he is a benchmark for elegance; she addresses him informally, he can't help but call her madame. As it is, Madam Judge Emma Toussaint and her clerk Fabrice Colet form quite a duo of investigators.
When “The Murder on White Street” begins, a delicate case is added to the overly long list of those on which Toussaint and Colet are working, at the Brussels courthouse. Delicate file, that is to say a file that stinks, translates the judge, who neither has her tongue in her pocket nor lets herself be trodden on. And since bad news never comes alone, a mysterious phone call revives an old affair. Let's go for a pleasant investigation.
Rhythmic dialogues and psychological finesse
Paul Colize is having fun, and so are we. We feel that he plays with the codes of the thriller, without slipping into clichés. He sketches the characters that the duo encounters, from the leader who looks like “an English spy in a black and white film” to the suspect who evokes “an agricultural tractor camouflaged as a Bentley”, makes the numerous and rhythmic dialogues sparkle, tit for tat, and shapes, with a psychological finesse that readers of his previous novels published by Éditions Bordeaux Hervé Chopin appreciate, the multiple facets of the judge and the clerk. This woman so determined but mother so anxious, this clerk by family vocation who cannot stand the sight of blood.
You will hardly see any blood. “The Murder on Rue Blanche” plays in “the register of cozy crime, light and effective,” explains editorial director Isabelle Chopin, with “the unique style and voice” of Paul Colize. This thriller is the fifth by the 71-year-old Belgian author that his house has published, among a work rich in around fifteen titles, some of which are available in Folio. Paul Colize has won a harvest of prizes, seeing his books selected several times in the latest selections of the Belgian equivalent of Goncourt, but despite this undisputed critical success, he is still little known to the general public.
Will there be a sequel?
Isabelle Chopin and Paul Colize met a few years ago at the Lyon Quais du Polar festival. A real human encounter, which leaves traces: “When he wanted to change publishing house, his agent contacted me,” remembers the Bordelaise. She relishes as much the historical or geopolitical background of her previous opuses as the offbeat tone of this one. But by the way, when you close the book, with a very open ending, a question burns on your lips: has the author planned a sequel? “Imagine that everyone asks him the question, us first,” laughs Isabelle Chopin.
To discover the beginning of this novel, click here.
“The Murder on Rue Blanche”, by Paul Colize, ed. Hervé Chopin, 320 p., €19.50, ebook €12.99.
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