The Lost and the Damned: The Times Crime Book of the Month

Description

"Slick, sick and not for the faint-hearted. It will make you cry out (for more)" - Mark Sanderson, The Times "Exhilarating . . . This is not conventional crime" Barry Forshaw, Independent Introducing Olivier Norek: Former police officer, writer on Spiral and an award-winning, million-copy bestseller. A corpse that wakes up during the autopsy. A case of spontaneous human combustion. There is little by the way of violent crime that Capitaine Victor Coste has not encountered in his fifteen years policing France's most notorious suburb - but nothing like this. As he struggles to find a link between the cases, he receives a pair of anonymous letters highlighting the fates of two women whose deaths were never explained - two more blurred faces among the ranks of the lost and the damned. Why were their murders not investigated? Coste is not the only one asking that question. Someone out there believes justice is best served on a cold mortuary slab. What readers are saying about The Lost and the Damned You can see the similarities with the TV series Spiral, which can only be a major positive! A hard hitting and gritty French crime read that makes an impact. A great thriller, sardonic, humorous, dark. I loved this book. Well written and had an authentic feel to it. A complete page turner. Translated from the French by Nick Caistor

Olivier Norek served as a humanitarian aid worker in the former Yugoslavia, before embarking on a eighteen-year career in the French police, rising to the rank of capitaine in the Seine-Saint-Denis Police Judiciare. He has written six crime novels, which have sold a million copies in France and won a dozen literary prizes.

Norek displays the mastery and assurance of an old hand. - Figaro. The French crime-writing revelation of the year. - R.T.L. The suspense is sustained until the final page. A masterful crime novel. - L'Express.