Grey Souls - Hardcover

Claudel, Philippe

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0297847791 ISBN 13: 9780297847793

Publisher: W&N, 2005

Synopsis

This is ostensibly a detective story, about a crime that is committed in 1917, and solved 20 years later. The location is a small town in Northern France, near V., in the dead of the freezing winter. The war is still being fought in the trenches, within sight and sound of the town, but the men of the town have been spared the slaughter because they are needed in the local factory. One morning a beautiful ten year old girl, one of the three daughters of the innkeeper, is found strangled and dumped in the canal. Suspicion falls on two deserters who are picked up near the town. Their interrogation and sentencing is brutal and swift.
Twenty years later, the narrator, a local policeman, puts together what actually happened. On the night the deserters were arrested and interrogated, he was sitting by the beside of his dying wife. He believes that justice was not done and wants to set the record straight.
But the death of the child was not the only crime committed in the town during those weeks. More than one record has to be set straight.
Beautiful, like a fairy story almost, frozen in time, this novel has an hypnotic quality.

About this title

Review:

an odd, disturbing novel, haunted by ghosts, the victims of crimes that are long past but ever present. .. a page turning whodunnit with a subtle after taste. (KATE CHISHOLM SUNDAY TELEGRAPH)

a masterpiece... a beautifully written and mesmeric study of individual and collective guilt. (DAILY MAIL)

Book Description:

A literary detective story about the murder of a young girl in a small town in Northern France in 1917

About this edition

• Publisher: W&N
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0297847791
• ISBN 13: 9780297847793
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 184