I found myself drawn deeper and deeper into this, the characters, the reprises of themes from French Existentialist novels, the spiral of dismal, but basically dull, failure. Then I realised it was nearly over. Could this be a great disappointment in the last chapters? How could any ending do this journey justice without the most crass shortcut?

I wasn't disappointed, but I was surprised. Shades of Ian McEwan. No, not everything is wrapped up. Most is left unanswered, because life is just like that. But you'll not see it coming.

Don't skip the foreword and especially the translator's afterword. ( )

This mystery is probably one of the best books I have read all year. Its been on my list for a while and I regret now I didn't read it sooner. Its a French police procedural about a husband who dies in a traffic accident late at night. The detective decides to investigate not the accident itself, but why the wealthy husband was lying to his wife for years about where he went every Tuesday night. The plot is interesting but the characters themselves are all too realistic in their flawed emotionally detached world. ( )

I was attracted to this because I read His Bloody Project. A different kettle of eels this one. Set in France a few years ago, a strange tale featuring losers that just keep messing it up, again and again. Murky, makes you squirm but keeps you in there wondering where it will go. No good news here, just a good read. ( )

This belongs to the genre of 'found manuscript' novels. 'The Accident on the A35' purports to be the work of Raymond Brunet, written sometime between his first novel, 'The Disappearance of Adele Bedeau', published in 1982 and 1992 when Brunet took his own life. It was one of two novels in manuscript posted to a publisher in 2014 and presented now in a translation from the French with a Foreword and Afterword by Graeme Macrae Burnet. The enthusiastic reception of 'The Accident on the A35' make it likely that the second of the recovered manuscripts will appear in the next year or so.

'The Accident on the A35' is apparently based, in part at least, on events in Brunet's own life. Bertram Barthelme, a wealthy lawyer in the provincial city of Saint-Louis, dies when his car runs off the freeway that runs between Mulrose and Saint-Louis. His son, a student of 17 called Raymond Barthelme finds an The protagonist of his novel, Raymond Barthelme ( )

This is the second of Burnet's Inspector Gorski novels, and there is the suggestion of a third to come. The author is purportedly a French writer who published one novel in the 1980s (The Disappearance of Adèle Bedeau and then committed suicide. Two more novels were sent just a few years ago to a French publisher and published to some acclaim and excitement. This frame is laid out in the foreword and afterword which bracket the story.

I enjoyed Adele Bedeau quite a bit, especially Inspector Gorski's character, and the setting was rich and atmospheric. These novels are clearly homages to Simenon and they reflect that author's characterizations, contexts, and insights about society. While these are set much later, they share enough that they feel of the same era. Unlike Simenon tightly written works, however, Burnet's mysteries are embedded in a larger story about family relationships and histories. The pace can be glacial.

The approach was less effective for me in this installment, in large part because everything felt somewhat familiar. The slightly creepy and disaffected young man, the seedy bars and mediocre restaurants, the vague air of anomie, are all revisited. Perhaps most disappointing for me, though, was Gorski's downward personal and professional trajectory. One of my favorite things about Maigret is that he is not your stereotypical alcoholic, unhappily married, anti-social inspector stuck in a dead-end job. But Gorski is in danger of becoming just that.

I'll still pick up the next one, though, because Burnet's writing works for me and he can really create a world. ( )