Alex, by Pierre Lemaitre

In general, what makes a good book?  Who knows?  Not I.  Varies from reader to reader.  But, if you like books that span the gaps from police procedural to mystery to serial killer to monstrous gore, I’ve finished one that will grip you in its bloodthirsty claws from page one.

Takes place in Paris.  Pierre Lemaitre’s protagonist, Commandant Camille Verhoeven, is the epitome of the anti-hero, and an original from start to finish.  Cantankerous, abrasive, short in stature and temper, the powers that be just flat do not like him.  He’s the detective for whom nothing is solved until he’s turned over every rock and stepped on everything that crawls out.  As a reader, sometimes you find yourself laughing out loud at his sarcasm.  Easy to laugh.  You’re an outsider.  Tougher when you’re in up to your eyebrows, your stupidity is hung out like dirty laundry, and the sarcasm cuts you like a rusty knife. Nobody evades his rapier tongue, or his insubordinate sighs.  Certainly not his superiors and especially not suspects with guilty looks, glibly spewing out half answers.

Camille’s superiors give him the shit cases, then are sorry they did.  Open and shut is never open and shut.  Arrogance and self-evidence never goes unquestioned by this snapping bulldog.

And what of the case itself?  A woman has been kidnapped.  You learn to hate the kidnapper in a page and a half.  But, as one curtain after another gets pulled back?  Let’s say this case and this thriller have more twists and turns than a cornered rattlesnake.  You know.  You’re sure you know.  But, you don’t know shit.  And so it goes to the last page.

I’ve simply never read a book like this.  Densely plotted. Characters drawn so sharply and deeply, you swap back and forth from love to hate to grudging admiration, until you find yourself in a quandary.

I’ve grown so tired of thriller that promise to thrill only to fall back on tired formulas, or unreasonable assumptions.  Fifty pages of splendorous magic, followed by 300 pages of pulp.  Makes you want to throw the author up against the wall for wasting your time.

This author is different.  Pierre Lemaitre has written a mystery-thriller-police procedural that not only entertains, but makes you laugh, makes you shiver, and leaves you breathlessly pondering for days afterwards.  The anti-hero, Commandant Camille Verhoeven is a character for the ages.  You may like him or not, but you’re going to be waiting for the next book to see exactly what the bastard is up to next.