Book Around the Corner

This month is #ReadIndies, where we read books published by independent publishers. It’s hosted by Karen and Lizzy. Marina Sofia decided to do a #FrenchFebruary for herself and I decided to join her and combine the two events.

So here we are with three French crime fiction books published by independent publishers (Les Arènes, Les éditions du Rouergue and Zulma)

Let’s start with…

Mamie Luger by Benoît Philippon. (2018) Not available in English. Publisher: Les Arènes, collection Equinox.

I came upon this book at Quais du Polar and its English title could be Nana Luger.

Berthe Gavignol, born in 1914 in a village in Cantal, France is the Mamie Luger of the book. Mamie, because she’s 102 when she greets the French police with her rifle and Luger because she owns a Luger gun acquired during the German occupation in WWII.

She’s taken to detention for shooting her neighbor and the police inspector André Ventura is in for a ride when she starts telling her life story.

Mamie Luger is a serial killer, out of circumstances. Her bad choice in men makes her a victim of domestic violence and she solves the problem with her Luger and her inhouse graveyard in her basement.

The author tells this incredible story on a tone laced with humor as a relationship builds between a bewildered Ventura and his new prison ward. It’s fun but a bit too long sometimes, less husbands wouldn’t have hurt.

Still, it’s a picture of what too many women have to endure and a take on rural life in France.

To read for fun and Marina Sofia’s thoughts on this one are here. Then, my February crime fiction journey led me to…

Par les rafales by Valentine Imhof (2018) Not available in English. Publisher: Rouergue noir.

It came as a blind book date as I asked the libraire of Un Petit Noir to pick books for me. This deadly road-movie took me from Lorraine, to Belgium, Louisiana and Canada. How?

Alex is a free-lance music journalist. When the book opens, she’s in a hotel room in Nancy after a music festival. She’s with a man, for a one-night-stand when their hookup spooks her and she kills her companion. Savagely.

Then she’s back to Metz, where she has her base camp and her lover, Anton. Alex is haunted, her skin is tattooed with excerpts from various works of literature. Her tattoo artist is Bernd, in Ghent, Belgium. He suggested to hide under ink all the marks of torture that covered her body. And they we learn how Alex got them and why she feels tracked like wildlife during a hunting party.

Each chapter of the book starts with an unreadable text, an excerpt of Alex’s tattoos. Par les rafales is Alex’s highspeed run race against the police, her imaginary hunters and her very real internal demons born with the assault she was victim of.

The book could have been written by Virginie Despentes, the one from Apocalypse Baby. Feminist. Full of literary and rock and blues references. (The playlist is at the end of the book and I’ll put in on Spotify when I have time). Crude with a strong female protagonist.

An unusual book, well-written, violent and haunting. It needs a translator.

After all the cold and rain of Par les rafales, I went to the French countryside, in the Drôme department, between Lyon and Provence for a wonderful book by Pascal Garnier.

Low Heights by Pascal Garnier (2003) Original French title: Les Hauts du Bas. Publisher: Zulma

Another book with a fiery old person. Edouard Lavenant is an old curmudgeon, forced to retire to a family property in Drôme Provençale, near Rémuzat after he had a bad stroke. He has a nurse and housekeeper, Thérèse, that he likes to torture. He’s as gracious a character by Thomas Bernhard. You see the drift.

He’s like a petulant child who’s sulking because he had to change his life and at the beginning of the book, we see how Thérèse manages to get him out of his shell with her unwavering kindness. It sounds all bucolic and the descriptions of the Drôme natural landscapes are gorgeous. It seems to go into the fluffy direction of the old man mollified by his housekeeper and learning to enjoy life again and make peace with his past.

Only it’s not a book by Elizabeth Gilbert, it’s a book by Pascal Garnier. Edouard doesn’t get out of his shell; he gets out of his personal Pandora box and all hell breaks loose, from Rémuzat, to Lyon and to Switzerland.

This is perfect noir literature, in less than 200 pages. Extraordinary sense of place with vibrant descriptions of the region that will make you travel to the Drôme Provençale area. A sense of humor that made me chuckle time and again. A storyline built like a well-oiled machine, like Hot Spot by Charles Williams or a roman dur by Simenon. There’s also a scene with snails that reminded me of the short-story The Snail-Watcher by Patricia Highsmith. The crime fiction gods are all approving of Low Heights.

Both Garnier and Tavernier are dead now but I could see them team up and make Low Heights into a magnificent film. We still have Jacques Audiard and it’s right up his alley. So, fingers crossed, eh?

Lucky you, out of the three French books I read for French February and Read Indies, this is the only one available in English, thanks to the indie publisher, Gallic Books and Melanie Florence who translated it. See also Marina Sofia’s take on it for Crime Fiction Lover and rush for it.