Put on your boots, waxed, and close the hatches: even if it's not Barbey d'Aurevilly, here's a noir novel that plunges you straight into the land of sea spray and calva.
Like any good Norman port, Cherville-sur-Mer, in Cotentin, is a town where rumor spits, where gossip floats.
Everything does not smell of iodine, far from it.
Against a background of latent misery, there are soaking words, devastating low blows like torpedoes.
You have to row if you want to reach your haven.
To discover
Digital event of the literary Figaro: "How to get published?"
In the secret of publishing houses ”
See also
Pax Cotentina
by Rodolphe Geisler: trouble in Cherbourg
Former political pen of
Figaro
, retired on these quays as much as in the neighboring stale beer harbors, Rodolphe Geisler knows what he is talking about. As one does not remake oneself, he, before writing this second drunken-advised thriller, left his ears hanging out in the kitchens of local power. And there inhaled a well-known aroma: this fascinating rot, this not fresh poison of the mandate when it is ogled like a cake or preserved like cheese. Attention, risk of slipping ... A deputy, very promising candidate for the Town hall has just been found dead in her permanent campaign. Someone stuck a rose between her teeth.
The case went back to Paris. Worse, she turns CNews on. On the spot, it is the commotion of combat. Groups of mercenary poster gliders at press conferences where locals and elected officials stand by the goatee. From the office of “Peanut” the uneducated Culture assistant, to the Café du Lighthouse where the paunchy boss mistreats his percolator when he does not water the customer.
A newly arrived multi-card activist, a parasite of meetings, is suspected. We also wonder about each member of the team of the deceased. Especially on this stakes of chief of staff named Jordan, said as fair the great Jordan. A young man with long teeth, who learns to scheming by watching
House of Cards on Netflix
. Unless the culprit is hiding among a trio of newly rallied assistants, felonious caciques above all careerists.
Fatal mist
, key novel? In this case, what about Gilles Tricot, a bald man with a red tie on a checked shirt, the gray eminence of the outgoing mayor. He does not meet anyone without his Dictaphone on and hidden. It reminds us of another fanatic who raged at the Elysee ...
As in
Pax Cotentina,
Geisler's first Chervillois opus, Stanislas Allix, interim curator with the appearance of a beaten dog, walks his barbour with holes on the shiny paving stones.
He investigates very weakly flanked by a factotum, the overly helpful Major Varadec.
Anyway, he knows that we are going to remove him from the case.
And then he would prefer to remain elbows on the zinc.
Come on boss, still a little drop in your darkness to get rid of the bitterness of provincial life?
Brume fatale
, by Rodolphe Geisler, La Gronde éditions, 175 p., € 15.