2006-04-22 Excellent French thriller

Jean Christophe Grange has perfected a style of slick sick Euro (In that they are set in Europe, namely France) thriller. His second book "Blood Red Rivers "was adapted into a disappointing film "Crimson Rivers" and he has been compared to Thomas Harris. While he lacks Harris's , at his best, ingenious characterisation of madness and his eye for forensic detail he still writes lean mean cleverly constructed plots with interesting characters . The books move with an irresistible momentum that puts other more feted thriller writers to shame without compromising the story. Grange essentially sticks to what he is good at.
Rather like the sadistic killer who has tortured and murdered three girls in the Turkish district of Paris and is now being hunted by two policemen, one formerly retired but a man with a deep knowledge of the area the killer has marked out as his territory. His methods are terse and brutal .The other is a young ambitious Inspector frustrated at the investigations lack of progress.
Meanwhile the wife of a senior Government official is suffering memory lapses where she doesn't recognise her husband and bizarre hallucinations where peoples faces melt and blur before her eyes. Not trusting the specialist who diagnoses a lesion on her brain she independently seeks out psychiatric help who uncovers the fact she has undergone extensive plastic surgery. Her face isn't her own but who did this to her and why? More pertinently why can she not recall any of this herself?
Mean while the two policemen have uncovered that the killer or killers of the girls may be connected to the ultra right Turkish political group "The Grey Wolves" whose methods are so diabolical they would give your average serial killer cold sweats.
Translated from French by Ian Monk this is a pacy cerebral thriller. Occasionally his metaphors area little clumsy -" She was a Russian Doll, with layered identities "- is the sort of thing Jeffrey Archer would spew from his word processor or what ever he utilises to write his drivel, but mostly this is very well written with a simmering undercurrent of violence and a moral subtext about the shameful exploitation of cheap labour and the socio-political underclass it creates. The violence is extremely graphic but never gratuitous and it really does grab your attention and refuse to let go like all good thrillers should. "Empire of the Wolves" has teeth.