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Most French policiers and indeed most English language crime fiction novels feature police or detectives pitted against criminals and killers, but we know that the police have to deal with far more than that in their line of work, and the nature of crime in the modern world is changing rapidly. In Paris alone there have been many serious real world challenges faced by the PJ ( Police Judiciaire ) and emergency services in recent years from terrorist attacks but all of that is just pointing to a larger scale issue that is approached in Christophe Molmy's Brûlez tout ("Burn Everything"), a novel which has been awarded the 2026 Prix du Quai des Orfèvres. The success and the significant mark that Brûlez tout makes is in how it turns its attention not just to rather more contemporary issues, but how it looks behind the front page headlines and considers some of the underlying issues that have the potential - the extreme likelihood rather - of occurring again in the future. ...

Promising great variety and an exploration of all sides of crime and Italian society, Augusto De Angelis' third Commissario De Vincenzi thriller, written in 1936, has different challenges for the commissioner and as such takes on a different tone from Il banchiere assassinato and Sei donne e un libro . It's in a different social milieu and, as such, he has to adapt his usual investigatory approach. De Vincenzi still prefers the psychological examination of witnesses and suspects, but rather than coming to the scene and attempting to track back to find a killer, he is very much involved in an ongoing investigation. At first however it's a case of arriving at a crime scene and getting a sense of the environment he is working in. It's at a book fair which, as an avid reader, is not unknown to him, but the victim of strangulation found in one of the booths has an unusual background. Giobbe Tuama is of American Irish background (Giobbe is the Italian for 'Job' in th...

The second Commissioner De Vincenzo novel by Augusto De Angelis again deals with crime that takes place not on the lower levels of society, but involving those in seemingly more respectable positions. It might be such subjects that made the author unpopular with the authorities - if you can call being arrested, interrogated and beaten to such an extent that it led to his death as being 'unpopular'. The very fact of writing crime novels and thereby showing an ugly side to Italian society was however enough to be deemed 'anti-fascist'. Unlike the Agatha Christie-like staged first De Vincenzi investigation Il banchiere assassinato , written in 1935, De Angelis here gives the evidence-first Milan police commissioner rather a more challenging situation with a larger group of people to come up with motive for murder, which makes even investigating or finding a suspect even harder. The nature of the murder that begins the investigation into Sei donne e un libro  ('Six Wome...

I wouldn't say that he works to a formula, but there are a number of familiar Franck Thilliez features evident at the start of his third novel Deuils de miel , published in 2006 following the Sharko debut Train d'enfer pour ange rouge and the Lucie Henebelle debut La chambre des morts . Aside from Sharko's dark brooding violence, to be expected after Train d’enfer pour ange rouge , there is the discovery of the body of a naked dead woman in an elaborately staged scene in a church confessional. Like another exchange that I referred to in the later novel Atom[ka] indicating the way ahead for a disturbing case, Sharko observes early on here that " en est parti pour une longue et macabre affaire ". Knowing Thilliez that will certainly be backed up, but it's already evident in the bizarre nature of the opening scene. Found dead and naked in a church confessional is the least of it. The victim here has had live butterflies stuck to her shaved head, and indeed all ...

For a short standalone story, Lisa Unger manages to pack a lot into the 70 pages of this crime thriller about Paige, a hit woman working for a shadowy organisation she knows only as "the Company". The story opens with her failing an assignment to kill a wealthy man, a hedge fund manager. It should have been an easy job, all the ground work and preparations taken care of in order to be able to slip into his house undetected, but at the last minute she is interrupted by the man's child who was not expected to be there. Nora, her boss, is not happy. She thinks that Paige might be losing her edge, softening, but maybe Paige has other things on her mind like the troubling nuisance calls she is receiving from her ex, Julian, also a hit man for the organisation and a cryptic message that could be a threat or a warning. Or maybe she has taken her eye off the ball while involved with the young new recruit, Drake, she is mentoring and sleeping with. Or both. Either way, when Nora i...

Post-apocalyptic stories were concerning enough before the COVID pandemic. La terra dei figli ('The Land of the Children') was written and drawn by Gipi in 2016, and reading it now that we have all became aware of the reality of what could happen and how quickly a virus could spread across the globe, it’s surprising how effectively his story captures the whole sense of fear that comes with the recognition that things have changed irrevocably. What makes it even more concerning is the realisation that even having come though such a global shock is the apparent inability of humanity to learn from its mistakes. All of this just makes La terra dei figli even more ominous. In Gipi’s graphic novel, the old world is long gone or, considering how quickly a global catastrophe can strike happen, perhaps not that long gone, but definitely gone. The initial impression Gipi gives us of this world is a rather bleak and feral one. We are introduced to two youths in an unpopulated savannah l...