To The Last Page

Absent from the second book in the series while Élise Duromain undertook a solo adventure - definitely going out on her own in À bout de souffle  - Lucas Lievens returns for his own solo investigation in the third book in Alex Sol's series, but going solo is the only option for Lievens. Already retired from the police even before the start of the series, he is still unable to shake off his own personal loss, Lucas now operates a Private Investigator service with only one real purpose; to find missing children. Yes, it seems like the missing person theme is continuing after the previous two books in the series, but as you would expect there is a subtle difference in each investigation that expands into something entirely different. Lucas Lievens operates to his own rules then, and in the case of his investigations, he only helps find abducted children: hopefully alive but it's more often the case that after several days of police investigation without result, he is searching fo...

I have to say I was surprised that Alex Sol chose to follow up the epic disappearance-on-a-subway-train mystery of her first Les enquêtes d'Elise Duromain et Lucas Lievens thriller À la vue de tous with the mystery of another disappearance on a moving train. There's no Lucas Lievens this time and Police Commissioner Élise Duromain is actually off-duty when she is witness to what appears to be a live abduction on the train she is on travelling back to Paris. She is even actually sitting in the seat in front of the lady Barbara, who is distraught when her 6 year-old son Gabriel disappears within a matter of minutes while she looked for an unoccupied toilet. No, you think, it can't be another case like the last one, and even Duromain tries to convince herself, but it does sound more like a case of trying to convince the reader that this one is different. While it might be related to an extent in terms of the author having another thought or variation on a theme, as the case d...

First published in 2023 at around 650 pages long Alex Sol's À la vue de tous ('In Plain Sight') is the first book in the author's Les enquêtes d'Elise Duromain et Lucas Lievens series, which she has somehow managed to follow up in quick succession with three further investigations. You get the impression that Sol must be able to write as quickly as you can read her books, and they are certainly designed to be read at a pace. Thankfully, at least on this first opening book in the series, it's clear that there has been no compromise in the quality of the writing. À la vue de tous certainly has you gripped from the intriguing opening incident. Laura has gone to the police with a report that her pregnant sister Marie has simply vanished between two stations on the Paris metro. It might not sound worrying, but it's surprising how many people wander off everyday and sometimes turn up again soon later, so the police understandably don't take the matter too se...