Territoires - Olivier Norek

Paris has recently seen an increase in drug related executions. That's usually a matter for the Drug Squad, but Captain Victor Coste's Crime 1 team in SDPJ 93, (Saint-Denis Police Judiciare) have been called in when a victim is discovered in a parking garage of an apartment block in Malceny, a HLM high-rise complex in a district that the police usually keep well away from. The victim has been taped to a chair and tortured before being killed in a unit where drugs are usually stashed.

Three killings in a week, all drug related, have taken out three quarters of the crime drug bosses in the region meaning Crime 1 have to work alongside the Drug Squad.  Bad news for Coste, and for a few unfortunate elderly people the gangs have pressed into minding drugs and weapons in their apartments, but bad news also for the mayor of Malceny-Bobigny, Andrea Vesperini. She relied on the drug lords to bring her in guaranteed voters in exchange favours, jobs in city hall, free holidays and money under the guise of community and cultural funds. There's going to be new people to deal with and, from the looks of it, they don't seem to be the friendliest to work with. It doesn't take long for the situation in Malceny to become explosive.

Olivier Norek creates a fascinating and quite credible link between crime and city hall in Territoires, showing just who benefits and who loses when rioting breaks out in the deprived high rise complexes in suburban Paris. More than just making Territoires a great political thriller, the author is just as effective in making it an intriguing investigation for Captain Coste and his team, leaving them with a tangled web of criminal activity to unravel that is politically sensitive and risks stepping on the toes of other police agencies and bosses. And the mayor. It even has a price to pay on Coste's love life and budding affair with pathologist Léa. Norek has a confident handle on the crime and political developments as well as the characterisation, making Territoires never less than a thrilling read from the first page to the last.

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