Characters with too much baggage.

Franck Thilliez has written a fascinating piece of crime fiction that manages to combine a fast-paced plot with abundant science. It is often hard to combine these two elements in fiction because the plotting can be outlandish or the science can lack detail. But this novel does an admirable job of creating a believable plot based on current research on the human genome, DNA biology, genetics, paleontology and evolution. While fully engaging the reader, Thiliez manages to include moments when the science is used to explain key plot points. He so deftly develops difficult scientific concepts that curiosity about his background seems inevitable. Wikipedia doesn’t have much, but it does cite a background in computer engineering.
Lucie Henebelle and Inspector Sharko have split since the brutal murder of one of Lucie’s twin daughters. The suicide of the twin’s murderer and the strange murder of a graduate student by a chimpanzee eventually result in the reunion of the two detectives. Lucie is obsessed with her twin’s killer and Sharko is trying to recover his career with this ostensibly mundane investigation. A series of coincidents eventually force the two investigators to collaborate on a complex case filled with all the questions and threats that readers of crime fiction have come to expect.
Thilliez manages to give Lucie the freedom she needs to investigate with a clever psychological plot twist that cannot be revealed without spoiling the fun. The in fighting between Sharko and his supervisor seems contrived and the plot would not have suffered much by its removal. ( )