Train d’enfer pour ange rouge - Franck Thilliez

Having come to Thilliez and Sharko via the more common route of the later Le Syndrome [E] and subsequent follow-ups with Lucie Hennebelle in [Gataca] and Atom[ka], I knew a little about what happened in Thilliez's first Sharko thriller Train d’enfer pour ange rouge, or at least one significant outcome. I also had a good idea of the dark tone that the book would take as that is characteristic of the author's writing and certainly the traumatic experience of this case in the first book has an outcome that marks Sharko deeply and is felt throughout the rest of the series. I'm not sure how much more of this I can say without giving away what might be considered a spoiler, but sure the book has been out for a number of years now and Thilliez has not yet had anything significant published in English, so it should be safe enough. I'll tiptoe around it just in case.

So I had some idea what to expect in Train d’enfer pour ange rouge (literally, Hell Train for Red Angel). What I didn't suspect and which disconcerted me more was the fact that Sharko relates this book in first person. It's odd to be in Sharko's head. Probably would be worse to be there after this book, but  ...anyway, that's not strictly true about it being more disconcerting. Nothing could be more disturbing than the killer we come up against in ange rouge. The descriptions of the first victims fate are appalling. I'm not going to enumerate the multiple mutilations inflicted upon Martine Priest but suffice to say that meathooks were involved, the victim was probably aware of what was being done to her and well, 'martyriser' (tortured) is the word employed and there is indeed a sense of someone being tested to the limits of human endurance. Sadistic enough to deliver photos of his handiwork to the victims mother as well, mentally destroying her.

It's a sign that the killer is a game player, a manipulator leaving obscures clues and traces inside the victim and at the crime scene partly to confuse the investigation but also to see how much they are able to find out. And in a perverse way, partly to help them on. The initial clues lead Sharko to Brittany where he discovers a connection between a woman called Rosance Gad, who was believed to have died in a worksite accident, and a BDSM group that hints at the motivations and modus operandi of killer. It's a filthy trail to follow, "un terrain marécageux débordant de pourriture et de furie", from mutilated dogs to extremes of human torture that takes Sharko to some very dangerous places in the world of dark internet and clubs catering to specialised tastes in pain and pleasure. And punishment?

Developed from one of the author's earliest short stories, as well as already establishing that very dark brutality that is a feature in Thilliez's work the first Sharko novel published in 2003 (before he wrote the prequel 1991, published in 2021) has one other key element of the commissioner's character that marks his development in subsequent novels - as if the killer here doesn't set a standard that any other author would find it hard to follow. That other factor is the disappearance of Sharko’s wife Suzanne, who doesn't even get the pleasure of being formally introduced (not until 1991). She is strangely already missing from the start and Sharko, although clearly concerned for her safety, seems strangely distant here up to the point where it becomes a real and present concern. He makes up for this in later books where he is a broken but driven police detective. Driven because he is broken.

What is also there from the outset in Train d’enfer pour ange rouge is the enormously complex and original mise en scène. There are so many layers here, psychological factors, mixed with bizarre behavioural issues, philosophical ideas, scientific, technological and biological factors, superstition and religious connections, codes and cyphers all coming together at the beginning of the era of cybercrime era, that Thilliez's writing plays out like no other crime fiction that I've come across. It's also extremely graphic and, I hesitate to say, creative or imaginative on the level of violence, torture and killing. This is dark, dark horror but of a human rather than a supernatural kind. And that sets the tone for, as I said, pushing even further in later books. Things don't get any better for Sharko from here on in.

Reading notes: Train d’enfer pour ange rouge was first published in France in 2003. I read a 2020 Pocket paperback reprint edition. It still strikes me as odd that Thilliez remains untranslated into English, but considering the graphic violence depicted primarily against women in his books, it might be too much for a publisher to handle in the current climate. I can't imagine that is actually the case - crime fiction isn't known for its timorousness - but for whatever reason Thilliez is a great crime fiction writer, strangely overlooked when it comes to English language translations.