Surtensions - Olivier Norek

Olivier Norek's Victor Coste/Banlieues Trilogy goes to some grim places where drugs and violent crime crime is rampant in Paris, but the third book in the series Surtensions (published in English as Breaking Point) opens up in one of the grimmest of all: the penitentiary of Marveil. Overcrowded and with the worst criminals locked away, with fewer than one warden per 100 prisoners, the wisest thing to do is keep your head down and stay safe. That goes for the guards as much as the prisoners, but that's easier said than done, as detainee 4657, 22 year old of Corsican origin, Nunzio Mosconi, known as Nano, finds out when sharing a cell with a brute like Machine.

The first part of Surtensions feels like it covers ground we've been over many times before. "Il n'existe pas d'endroit plus dangereux, inégal et injuste que la prison... La prison comme une école du crime." It deals with the daily beatings, rapes and mistreatment of Nano, and it's not pretty stuff, as you can imagine. Actually you don't need to imagine as it's been seen many times in the more gritty prison movies, but Norek backs up his points with footnotes to academic studies and doesn't miss the irony of people in prison for drug offences and sexual aggression being activities that are tolerated, acceptable and even expected in a prison like Marveil. Caught for stupidly wearing an expensive watch from one of their burglary raids, Nano is however cracking up and his Corsican family team of crooks need to get him out. Their lawyer has a plan, a daring one to get Nano out, but he also has a secret agenda of his own for some other clients.

Actually even before we get to the first part - just in case you begin to wonder where Captain Victor Coste of the Crime 1 unit of the SDPJ 93 is, there is a prologue that sets everything up intriguingly with Coste going over with a police psychiatrist how he killed one man and lost a member of his own team. Clearly things have gone badly wrong somewhere and you can see a few mistakes made in the kidnapping case in Part 2 of Surtensions. David Sebag, the 19 year old son of a wealthy Jewish businessman, has been kidnapped and the power battles within the different departments of the force have led to some errors and an underestimation of the kidnappers. The criminals have made some mistakes too and one of them ends up in the prison of Merveil. Now where have we heard that name before?

Surtensions is superbly constructed, every section and chapter is thrilling in its own right, filled with little side details and criminal activities but it is always with a eye on the bigger picture. It's utterly authentic, not just in the technical side of the policing and criminal justice system, but in the way people, criminals, police and indeed ordinary people think and behave. That view centres very much on Coste and the principal characters of SDPJ 93 Crime 1 team, of course, but Norek takes time to explore the impact that work in dangerous criminal investigation has on them and others in their personal lives. Early on we are made aware that Coste is close to giving up the service - and conflict with a new head of the SJPD93 doesn't help - but feels responsibility for his team, which adds to the already high tensions in their latest investigation.

I've only outlined a small part of the story here, but there is so much more and the way Oliver Norek has conceived and executed all the interlocking elements of Surtensions is beyond exemplary. As good as the other books in the series are - Code 93 and then Territoires raising the stakes each time - this is on another level entirely.

Reading notes: Surtensions by Olivier Norek is publiched in France by Michel Lafon. I read the French edition in Kindle eBook. I stumbled upon Fred Vargas very early which is unfortunate in some respects as other than a longer term love of Simenon, it's been a long search to find anyone in French crime writing that measures up to the greats. Olivier Norek is definitely up there - never more impressed than by this particular book - head and shoulders above anyone else writing gritty thrillers based on contemporary citizens and crime in the outer suburbs of Paris.