384 pages
I chose After the Crash, because the story was quite different from what is usually done: we do not seek the murderer but the identity of a baby!
The book alternates between different views, different countries, different periods, which can stun a little when it is wrongly done but that's not the case here. Here, it gives more of a sense of urgency to find the answer to the question: but who is this child?
It's a theme that has always intrigued people I think: imagine a child who was raised in the wrong family. Here, one family is rich, but crazy, the other is poor, but loving. How does one know which one is the right one? Credule Grand Duke (just that name made me want to read this book!) a private detective in search of that answer, pays the truth with his life.
Mark, the brother of the girl and who love that same girl, will do everything to find the identity of the sister he loves as a man. One can only hope for him that she's the child of the other family, the mad-crazy rich family, even if everything points to his own.
And then the end comes to destroy all the tracks that you thought you had found. The end, as fast and brutal as the death of Credule Grand-Duc at the beginning, will throw you to the ground as fast as an unexpected newspaper article. We feel a certain sense of race against time (even if we only know why that race is so important towards the end) that ended up at a steady pace and a great twist.
But what's the story?
On the night of 22 December 1980, a plane crashes on the Franco-Swiss border and is engulfed in flames. 168 out of 169 passengers are killed instantly. The miraculous sole survivor is a three-month-old baby girl. Two families, one rich, the other poor, step forward to claim her, sparking an investigation that will last for almost two decades. Is she Lyse-Rose or Emilie?
Eighteen years later, having failed to discover the truth, private detective Crédule Grand-Duc plans to take his own life, but not before placing an account of his investigation in the girl's hands. But, as he sits at his desk about to pull the trigger, he uncovers a secret that changes everything - then is killed before he can breathe a word of it to anyone . . .
In a nutshell
Am I glad to having discover yet another great French author! After the Crash reads in one enjoying sitting with a sense of urgency about the search of an identity that makes all the difference.
Disclaimer: An e-galley of this title was provided to me by the publisher. No review was promised and the above is an unbiased review of the novel.
Disclaimer: An e-galley of this title was provided to me by the publisher. No review was promised and the above is an unbiased review of the novel.
