Book #27 Time is a Killer

Time Is a Killer by Michel Bussi
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

My thanks to the Orion Publishing Group and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this ARC of Time is a Killer.

I have previously read After The Crash and Black Water Lilies by Michel Bussi (both excellent) so I had some idea of what to expect with this new book. So I thought. But Michel Bussi just gets better. He has an extraordinary ability to intrigue. Time is a Killer presents a broad tapestry of the Idrissi Corsican family. A catastrophic car crash in the summer of 1989 leaves three members of a family dead; only the daughter Clotilde survives. Wind on twenty-seven years. Clotilde (Clo) returns with her husband Frank and teenage daughter Valentine. Clo wants to exorcise the past and build bridges with her errant daughter. They visit the ravine where the crash occurred.

”It was here, Valentine. It was here that your Grandpa and Grandma died. And your Uncle Nicholas as well…". Frank and Valentine appear disinterested.

In 1989 Clotilde kept a journal of events that summer. It remained lost for twenty-seven years. Or so she thought. Someone is reading it. Could it contain clues to what really happened? And then Clotilde receives a letter, in her mother’s unmistakeable handwriting. As if she were still alive…

Bussi moves smoothly from events in 1989 to present day. Fragments of memory return to Clotilde. But how can her mother be alive? The tension and menace builds, page after page. The pace is relentless as further clues surface. The reveal is breathtaking.

The Corsican characters are totally believable, some hide behind omertà, the code of honour that places importance on silence and non-cooperation with authorities. What is there to hide?

Michel Bussi has written another compelling and stunning read with a truly shocking ending. Certainly a candidate for my Best Read of 2018.

Praise must also go to Shaun Whiteside for the brilliant translation from the original French.

Highly recommended.

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Book #53 Black Water Lilies

Black Water Lilies by Michel Bussi
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Extraordinary. Plotting that sets ones head in a spin. Mesmerising. ‘Twin Peaks’ came to mind. There were times when I wondered if I had strayed into the pages of some dystopian place, somewhere imaginary. Riddles within riddles. And yet, this accomplished work is set in Giverny, Normandy - the home of Claud Monet and the famous lily pond that featured in so many of his paintings.

Jérôme Morval is a resident, a renowned ophthalmologist, has a passion for art and women and meets an untimely death, found dead in the stream that runs through the gardens of Giverny. In his pocket is a postcard of Monet’s Water Lilies with the words: Eleven years old. Happy birthday.

Three women are entangled in the plot: a young painting prodigy, a seductive schoolteacher and an old widow who watches over the village from a mill by the stream.

All three share a secret…

Do they know anything about Morval’s corpse? Is there a connection to the mysterious, rumoured painting Black Water Lilies?

The timeline had me flummoxed moving as it does from 1937 to 2010 and there were times that I lost track of where on earth I was as Bussi breaks all the rules of plotting. And the ending when it comes - the reveal - is seismic in its effect. I was completely blind-sided. A triumph, elegant and haunting.

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After The Crash

After the Crash by Michel Bussi
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

After The Crash is a quite remarkable thriller, indeed one of the best I have ever read. The plot is very cleverly constructed and very different from most in this genre. It is a compulsive page-turner.

On the night of 22nd/23rd December 1980 an Airbus 5403 flying from Istanbul to Paris crashes on the Franco-Swiss border. All the passengers and crew are killed instantly, apart from one miraculous survivor - a three-month-old baby girl. But who is she? Two families step forward to claim her - the mega-rich de Carvilles and the impoverished Vitrals. Is the baby girl Lyse-Rose or Emilie? The conundrum runs for eighteen years until the detective investigating the case makes a discovery that could change everything....

As you read this you will question everything. The shocks come fast and furious in this relentless page-turner. It is a psychological masterpiece that I really could not put down. The concluding sting in the tail is so unexpected it left me completely bemused.

Total, compelling enjoyment and I thoroughly recommend it.

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