Blood-Red Rivers - Softcover

Grange, Jean-Christophe

4.18

9,929 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1860466605 ISBN 13: 9781860466601

Publisher: Harvill Pr, 1999

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Niemans is the ex golden-boy of the commando squad. Abdouf is a young ruffian turned police inspector. They are both experienced police officers who believe they have seen everything, until both come up against gruesome cases and the two team up when a third, connected victim is found.

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Review:

The roman policier, or detective novel, has long been popular in France, but few works by French authors have received much attention in other countries. Jean-Christophe Grange's Blood-Red Rivers enjoyed considerable success in France (film rights have already been sold), and has arrived to test American waters.

When a mutilated corpse is discovered wedged in an isolated crevice on a rock face outside Guernon, a university town in the French Alps, Pierre Ni�mans--a brilliant Parisian detective given to uncontrollable fits of violence--arrives to investigate. Eager to escape the cloud of an official inquiry into his behavior (beating a hooligan so violently that the man is in a coma), Ni�mans swaggers into the tiny town, torn between outrage at being exiled and determination to prove himself to the superiors he detests. The body hints at a long history of animosity between the university and the townspeople; when another body is found frozen in a glacier, Ni�mans' investigation becomes linked to that of another maverick policeman, Karim Abdouf, who has a chip on his shoulder even bigger than Ni�mans's. Abdouf is attempting to discover why a child's tomb has been desecrated, and why all official traces of that child's existence have disappeared. When he discovers that the child's mysterious, beautiful mother comes from Guernon, Abdouf realizes that the antagonism between town and gown is not a matter of philosophy, but of life and death.

Blood-Red Rivers possesses the seeds of an interesting concept, but its promise is overwhelmed by a plot that lurches from one absurdity to another, clumsy characterization, a tedious reliance on clich�d dialogue, and a too-literal translation. It was touted by a review in Le Figaro as "the best thriller since Silence of the Lambs," but there's no comparison between Grange's novel and Thomas Harris's skilled plotting, concise language, and disturbingly sympathetic portrait of a madman. Given the number of truly talented French mystery and thriller authors, one hopes that more promising works will soon be sent across the Atlantic. --Kelly Flynn

From the Inside Flap:

In a world of knife-edge glaciers, a hideous crime leads two maverick detectives to confront the limits of human evil.

A corpse is discovered wedged in an isolated crevice. It has been horribly mutilated. The brilliant but violent ex-commando Pierre Ni�mans is sent from Paris to the French Alps to lead the investigation. Meanwhile, in a town in south-west France, Karim Abdouf, a young Arab policeman, is trying to find out why the tomb of a young child has been desecrated. When a second baby is found, high up in a glacier, the paths of the two policemen are joined in the search for their killers, a trail that embroils them in the mysterious cult of the Blood-Red Rivers.

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