It’s often said that novelists are either plotters or pantsers, they work everything out beforehand or they fly along the page by the seat of their pants, not knowing where the narrative is hurtling as they write.

What I liked: If you’re going to write a crime novel then you’ve got to scatter a few surprises in the story like the nasty pellets that Alex is forced to consume in her dank prison. If you’re a crime writer who wants to learn how to your readers down unpredictable paths, flip your story over, turn it inside out, change the game - oh, you you know what I mean - I’d absolutely recommend you read this novel very closely.Ī former psychologist and teacher, Lemaitre’s an award-winning writer in France, and but Camille returns in another novel in July. It’s the disturbing and compelling description that grips initially in Alex, but the novel twists into something more complex and interesting, and Camille’s search for Alex takes on a different kind of urgency.Ĭamille is a really interesting little man, egotistical and difficult, but his trusting relationship with his team is respectful, touching and supportive – in sharp contrast to the heart of darkness that swirls around the novel’s eponymous heroine.īut it’s the plotting that takes your breath away.

But then the novel throws a narrative curveball, and then another one, and a few more, and you realise that Monsieur Lemaitre – and, I should add, his admirable translator Frank Wynne – have been playing you for a fool. Camille and his team search frantically for Alex, and the book careens along at a good old pace, upping the tension as Camilles race to save Alex before it’s too late. It’s almost impossible to describe the plot of Alex without revealing too much, but the novel begins with the seemingly random kidnapping of a young woman called Alex Prevost, who is hung in a cage in a warehouse and left there as food for a filthy horde of hungry rats.Ī diminutive police inspector called Camille Verhoeven – a man whose towering ego could give Napoleon a run for his money – is persuaded to take on the investigation, despite his own beloved wife having been kidnapped and murdered in the past. There’s nothing more depressing than getting a chapter into a book and realising you know how it’s all going to play out, to the bitter end. If you’re looking for a novel that’ll knock you off balance with a series of twisty-turns, you could do worse than read Pierre Lemaitre’s cunning thriller Alex.Īlex is a venomous little viper of a book – just when you think you’ve got a grip on the story, it slithers out of your grasp and slides off into another dark corner – and we all like that in a story, right? Nobody wants to plod the same old linear path.

Alex by pierre lemaitre