Pierre Lemaitre is a French novelist and screenwriter, internationally celebrated for his crime fiction featuring Commandant Camille Verhœven. His work is lauded for its gripping narratives and profound insights into the human psyche. Beyond his celebrated detective stories, Lemaitre also crafts expansive historical novels, demonstrating a remarkable versatility.
SHE'S RUNNING OUT OF TIME Alex Prévost - kidnapped, beaten, suspended from the ceiling of an abandoned warehouse in a wooden cage - is in no position to bargain. Her abductor's only desire is to watch her die. HE WANTS ONLY ONE THING Apart from a shaky police report, Commandant Camille Verhoeven has nothing to go on: no suspect, no leads. If he is to find Alex, he will have to get inside her head. ESCAPE IS JUST THE BEGINNING Resourceful, tough, beautiful, always two steps ahead - Alex will keep Verhoeven guessing till the bitter end. And before long, saving her life will be the least of his worries.
The year is 1918, the war on the Western Front all but over. An ambitious officer, Lieutenant Henry D'Aulnay-Pradelle, sends two soldiers over the top and then surreptitiously shoots them in the back to incite his men to attack the German lines. When another of D'Aulnay-Pradelle's soldiers, Albert Maillard, reaches the bodies and discovers how they died, the lieutenant shoves him into a shell hole to silence him. Albert is rescued by fellow soldier, the artist Edouard Péricourt, who takes a bullet in the face. The war ends and both men recover, but Edouard is permanently disfigured, and fakes his death to prevent his family from seeing him as a cripple. In gratitude for Edouard's rescue, Albert becomes the injured man's companion and caregiver. Finding that the postwar gratitude for the soldiers' service is nothing more than lip-service to an empty idea, the two men scramble to survive, ultimately devising a scam to take money for never-to-be-built war memorials from small towns. Meanwhile, Lieutenant Pradelle has married Edouard's sister Madeline and is running a scam of his own that involves the exhumation of war victims. In this sorrowful, heart-searching novel, the interwoven lives of these three men create a tapestry of the human condition as seen through the lens of war, revealing brutality and compassion, heroism and cowardice, in equal measure
The final novel in Pierre Lemaitre's between-the-wars trilogy - a riotous
depiction of the Phoney War from the perspective of an unlikely group of
people caught up in its chaos.
In kidnapping cases, the first few hours are vital. Police Commandant Camille Verhoeven has nothing to go on: no suspect, no leads, no hope. But as he begins to understand more about Alex, he starts to realise she is no ordinary victim...
Draws on five contemporary and classic literary murder scenes in a prequel to "Alex" that finds Camille Verhoeven linking a brutal double murder to a cold case before his pregnant wife is abducted by the killer.
Anne Forestier finds herself in the wrong place at the wrong time when she is trapped in the middle of a bank robbery. Shot three times, she is lucky to survive - and morbidly unlucky to remember the face of her assailant.Followed home from her hospital bed, Anne is in grave danger. But one thing stands in her favour - a dangerously vengeful partner, carrying the scars of devastating loss, who will break all the rules to protect the woman he loves: Commandant Camille Verhoeven.Following the horror of Ir ne and the thrills of Alex, Camille is the heart-stopping final chapter of Lemaitre's multi-award-winning trilogy, soon to be the subject of a major American film. Drawn once again into a labyrinthine web with answers ever out of reach, Camille must draw on all his talent to face an enemy who threatens everything he holds dear.
