You always know with a Michel Bussi novel, that nothing is going to be simple.

From the beginning there are apparently two separate stories: on July 12th 2014 a section of cliff near Yport collapsed, and scattered over 40 metres of the beach among the debris are three human skeletons. Five months earlier a macabre event occurred with no apparent connection to the three skeletons. Out for his morning jog, Jamal witnesses a girl leap off the cliff to the beach below. By the time he gets down to the beach, she is dead, and there are two people standing there looking st the corpse.

There are inconsistencies that Jamal does not understand, and as days progress, he feels uncomfortably that the police are trying to imply that he has had something to do with the death.

Jamal discovers that the event is horribly similar to one that took place almost exactly 10 years earlier on a nearby coastline. The police thought that one was a rape/murder, and it was followed quickly by another. The murderer was never identified.

The thing I find about Michel Bussi plots is that they play with your mind.You begin to wonder whether the narrator is reliable, or whether the whole thing is just a nightmare that you somehow slipped into. But good things come to those who persist. ( )

Excellent mystery. Two women are raped and killed on the Atlantic coast of France in 2004 and the murders remain unsolved. Ten years later, a young Arab paraolympian hopeful, with a prosthetic leg, is running along these same cliffs, when he sees a red Burberry silk scarf and a beautiful woman, who is disheveled contemplating suicide. He tries to calm her, but to no avail as she grabs the scarf and jumps to her death. The young man becomes the prime suspect, and he finds a woman to help him. Meanwhile, he is receiving envelopes with details about the prior murders and investigation when it turns out his victim is the spitting image of one of the 2004 victims. Readers are wondering what is real and what is imagined as witnesses disappear and the still grieving families are looking for vengeance. Suspenseful and unpredictable for almost the entire book. ( )

Michel Bussi hat einen Roman voller Wirrungen, Fragen und Geheimnisse erschaffen. Er konnte mich von der ersten bis zur letzten Seite fesseln und stets aufs neue verwirren. Mit seinem Charakter Jamal und dem Ende hat er mich begeistert und rundet das ganze mit einem schlichten, aber einnehmenden Schreibstil ab. ( )