Ted Fox reviews The Accident on the A35 by Graeme Macrae Burnet. Published by Text Publishing.
Fans of Georges Simenon’s Inspector Maigret novels will find and enjoy familiar ground in The Accident On The A35, the second in a trilogy of French detective novels by Scottish writer Graeme Macrae Burnet.
The sensation is hardly surprising as Macrae Burnet admitted in an interview with the Irish Times he is a great fan of Simenon and has read all of his books, The Little Man from Archangel being his favourite.
Macrae Burnet’s new book revisits Georges Gorski, the Alsatian police chief featured in his debut novel The Disappearance of Adele Bedeau, the first in a trilogy of French detective novels.
But that was not the novel which brought the author critical acclaim.
Rather it was his second and unrelated novel, His Bloody Project, a story written in "found-document" form and set in a 19th-century crofting town in Scotland, which brought wider fame to Macrae Burnet.
Prior to that, he was largely unknown outside of his native country.
The Accident On The A35 begins with the death of Bertrand Barthelme, a respected solicitor, in what at first sight appears to be an ordinary road accident.
Because of Barthelme’s standing in the community, Inspector Gorski elects to deliver the bad news to the man’s family himself. He finds the widow, Lucette, and her son, 16-year-old Raymond, both curiously unmoved.
In addition, Gorski has his doubts about the accident, as the damage to Barthelme’s Mercedes doesn’t appear to be consistent with hitting a tree.
The inspector, whose wife and daughter have walked out on him, is drawn to the widow Lucette, who is both younger and more attractive than he expected.
He then discovers Barthelme lied to his wife, telling her he was at the dinner of a little club that met every Tuesday.
But it was a club Gorski finds does not exist.
This is no flashy piece of detective fiction; in fact it’s doubtful whether there was a crime at all. Macrae Burnet merely posits himself as the translator of the work by deceased French novelist, Raymond Brunet, (the surname a nice anagram).
As in His Bloody Project, which was shortlisted for last year’s Man Booker, Macrae Burnet uses the device of being merely the presenter of another’s words.
The device confused some booksellers who thought the author of the Scottish-based novel was the researcher of the book rather than the writer.
In the words of Jean-Paul Satre, used at the beginning of the novel: "What I have written is false. True. Neither true nor false".
The foreword suggests there is a third Gorski novel in the offing.
- Ted Fox is an online marketing and social media consultant.
