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Three Days and a Life

On sale

3rd May 2018

Price: £9.99

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Selected: Paperback / ISBN-13: 9780857056658

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LONGLISTED FOR THE CWA INTERNATIONAL DAGGER 2018

Antoine is twelve years old. His parents are divorced and he lives with his mother in Beauval, a small, backwater town surrounded by forests, where everyone knows everyone’s business, and nothing much ever happens. But in the last days of 1999, a series of events unfolds, culminating in the shocking vanishing without trace of a young child. The adults of the town are at a loss to explain the disappearance, but for Antoine, it all begins with the violent death of his neighbour’s dog. From that one brutal act, his fate and the fate of his neighbour’s six year old son are bound forever.

In the years following Rémi’s disappearance, Antoine wrestles with the role his actions played. As a seemingly inescapable net begins to tighten, breaking free from the suffocating environs of Beauval becomes a gnawing obsession. But how far does he have to run, and how long will it take before his past catches up with him again?

Translated from the French by Frank Wynne

Reviews

Kirkus Review
No one is writing quirkier thrillers than Lemaitre, who gets inside the head of his unhinged protagonist with wicked delight while capturing the madness of the modern world ... A feverish, wickedly entertaining work
Barry Forshaw, Guardian
Pierre Lemaitre continues his upward movement with Three Days and a Life ... typically astringent and accomplished fare
Jon Coates, Express
Thought-provoking and unsettling, Three Days And A Life is another work of genius from a master storyteller at the top of his game
Marcel Berlins, The Times
Lemaitre is surely France's most elegant and imaginative crime writer
Financial Times
Lemaitre may be the best current French writer of crime fiction