To The Last Page

Guillaume Musso's Parce que je t'aime (Because I love you) opens with a request not to reveal the ending to your friends. Since you haven't started the book yet, this seems less of a prompt than a warning that you can expect thrills spills and twists along the way. And the book does indeed deliver those dramatic incidents right from the start, with little let up and with a certain amount of contrivance that you would expect and be prepared to accept from a bestseller thriller, from a French writer moreover writing in the same style and setting an American bestseller author… but as long as it delivers on its promise, you will be more than willing to go along with the extraordinary events that take place. First you get a hold up on a Manhattan street where a famous violinist and her companion are threatened by a mugger while out for a walk after her performance at a concert. Nicole Hathaway is very nearly killed in the incident, saved only by a homeless person springing up, ...

Guillaume Musso is one of the bestselling crime fiction writers in France, but up until recently I have remained resolutely loyal to the classics, from Gaston Leroux and Maurice Leblanc to George Simenon and Fred Vargas, not trusting contemporary bestselling as any indicator of quality. Having heard good things about his latest book, L'Inconnue de la Seine (to be published later this year in English translation as The Stranger in the Seine ), and having already impressed with two other prolific contemporary French writers (Olivier Norek, Franck Thilliez), I thought it worth giving this one a go. And yes, based on this one, I'd have to say that Guillaume Musso is up there with the best of modern crime writers anywhere in the world.  What sets L'Inconnue de la Seine out as great here is perhaps the plotting more than the characterisation, but I don't have too many complaints about the latter. As far as plotting goes, while the introduction of police officer Captain Roxa...