Si la bête s’éveille - Frédéric Lepage

There are a number of features that give Si la bête s’éveille ('If the Beast Awakens') a somewhat unusual character for a crime thriller, much of them likely to do with the author Frédéric Lepage having an extensive CV in film, essay writing, TV and documentary outside of his crime fiction writing. Whether you think there is maybe too much emphasis on subjects not directly related to the crime, or whether this is an advantage that lifts the novel above the average - the novel won the Prix Cognac for the best French language crime novel in 2021 - it does raise some interesting philosophical, psychological and behavioural questions that are worth considering outside the context of the crime thriller.

In the first chapter of Si la bête s’éveille we are introduced (in italics in the past) to Adam Leaf as a young man being brought up by grandmother Ariana. It's hinted that he has a strong sense of justice, preparing to attack a store that short changed his grandmother. He learns a lesson and years later in the novel proper he is a talented young police officer, rising in the force and engaged to a superior officer, Angelina, a captain in the NYPD. They are about to get married and start their new life together living in a dream apartment on Amsterdam Avenue when Adam is attacked while moving the final possessions from his old apartment. A ricoched bullet to the spinal column leaves him paralysed from the neck down.

The attacker and his motive are hard to fathom, but Angelina has her team working on it. The man, wearing a face mask and a wig, had placed himself among the removal men but wasn’t part of the team. As the apartment had just been cleared and there is only an antiquarian signed first edition book missing, it can't have been a normal burglary. Despite the consequences for Adam, it's not the most thrilling of starts; no motive, no leads, the concern is mainly on whether Adam will learn to adapt or recover. There is the suggestion (perhaps based on the title) that there might be something sinister going to 'evolve' when Adam agrees to take part in a new experimental treatment using a trained capuchin monkey called Clara to help him with small tasks that unable to do while in a tetraplegic state. But there is more to come when a puzzling murder case turns up; the 14 year old daughter of a famous artist has been brutally assaulted and murdered in her own bedroom at the famous Dakota building.

The murder case takes a backseat for much of the novel, partly because the NYPD think they have a suspect (or two) charged, but mainly because the author seems to be more interested in exploring Adam's experience while in convalescence learning about the behaviours of Clara and his studies into animal behaviour. Those elements do eventually feed into the murder investigation and the mystery behind the attack in Adam’s apartment. As Clara's behaviours become more unpredictable, Adam even takes on a crash course at an online university and begins to prepare a thesis in the subject. His study into animal behaviour however leads him to make the insight that humans are also animals and their underlying violence can often arise from the same motivations and instincts as many species of other animals.

The reason why Frédéric Lepage takes this unusual angle may be explained by the author's other activities as a writer and documentary film maker on animals, nature and the environment, but his career and subjects of interest are extremely varied. Si la bête s'éveille seems to have two main subjects that are elaborated upon to a much greater extent than that which would be given over to the crime aspect in a typical thriller; the interest in animal behaviour and Adam's attempt to deal with and overcome his paralysis.

This gives the novel a curious imbalance. I didn't find it totally convincing in its character development or on the human behaviour side; at least not as far as the main characters are drawn. There is however some merit in the 'academic' side of the theory of the animal instinct explaining why humans have not yet sufficiently evolved past the territorialism, barbarism and violence that still remains a problem in so-called civilised society. As a crime thriller, although it has unusual elements that prevent it from really heating up, it does seem to accurately reflect weaknesses in how the police - even on a high profile case - can miss clues and look for easy/wrong suspects. They don't seem to act with the kind of urgency you might expect either, but there is something in that too. 

Despite reservations, there is definitely enough to keep you interested in where it is going and Lepage manages to wraps up all the angles and cases fairly well. I'm not sure that animal rights would ever permit capuchin monkeys to be used as servants for disabled people in the same way as guide dogs are used for the blind, and some of the problems that Adam encounters would lead to unexpected difficulties, but there is enough content and ideas here to keep you thinking further about some of the points raised after the crime investigation is resolved. 

Reading notes: Si la bête s’éveille by Frédéric Lepage was published in France by Plon in 2020. I read the Pocket paperback published in 2022. I always find French novels set in America strange, but probably only because they "talk" in French and inevitably use French turns of phrase. I soon got past that here and didn't find it too incongruous after a while, but there is still a very much French literary character to the approach here in Si la bête s’éveille that does feel at odds with the setting. I'm not sure I can put my finger on what exactly I mean by that, other than perhaps it's a little 'academic' and detached, rather than being involved in the mechanics of delivering a fast-paced tension building crime thriller. It's about as far away from Steve Cavanagh as you can get in other words' not that that is the only way to write a thriller, but just a reference as to where this novel lies.