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One night, when he has to run an errand for a regular customer who lives alone in the middle of the woods, a young pizza delivery man sees a terrifying sight. The quadra is wrapped in one of those latex suits used for SM games, her mouth is gagged from the inside by a ball of soft material that sticks to the mucous membranes, and she is fixed by straps in a bathtub with the faucet running. The blood-reddened mirror of the bathroom came just to his lips, and within seconds the client was dead. Before leaving, the boy spots an acronym spray-painted in black on the white tiles: MPC /1.
Major Louise Caumont of the Tarbes Research Brigade is the victim of the case. Accompanied by her assistant and friend Violaine, she carefully studies the victim’s profile. And that’s not trivial. Valériane Ducuing is a loner who maintains close ties with her family. She worked as a coroner before leaving everything to lock herself in this family home where she lives with her dog. She is not known to be a friend or lover, she has a rather gothic profile, dresses in black and is stricken with death. And try as she might, she doesn’t see who can blame her for wanting to torture her like that. Louise and Violaine – Céline Denjean’s recurring investigative duo – have a deep understanding of their past and understand that at some point in their lives there was a rupture. Caused by what? You have a vague feeling that the answer will have implications for the rest of the investigation. The investigation must be expedited. Louise understood that the 1 in the acronym MPC /1 means that this assassination attempt is only the first in a series. And she’s not wrong: a few days later, a man is found dead in the same conditions: Magyd Ayed is a 37-year-old real estate developer (in the same age bracket as Valériane, who claims not to know him), single, childless. At the crime scene we found the acronym MPC /2.
they have no choice
Given the scale of the crisis and the fear it is beginning to cause, Louise Caumont is seconded to Bayonne, where she has to work hand in hand with Major Léa Badenco. Needless to say, the two women aren’t thrilled, the early days of their investigations together are marred. But they have no choice, they know that a third murder is possible, they absolutely must find out what Valériane Ducuing and Magyd Ayed have in common. They are convinced that this will put them on the trail of the murderer.
If you have a weekend without work, kids, love or anything else, this thriller is perfect. You squeeze into a chair or a hammock, into your bed or onto the sand, you attack the beast (about 500 pages) and only look up when you’re done. The plot is engaging and very well put together, the characters interesting and the writing fluid. Céline Denjean, whose previous novel Matrices (ed. Black Lab) we really enjoyed, knows how to manage the suspense. His investigative duo are friendly, sometimes a little too much, we wish they would stop calling each other “Darling” or “very expensive”in the end it hits us on the system, but it’s just a tiny detail.
