In his heyday, Jacques Normand was France's Public Enemy Number One, a glamorous rogue who captured the imagination of the entire country. As he led the police on a merry chase, he also made the career of Commissaire Louis Moreau, former head of the Paris Anti-gangs unit...now the commander of a small Police Judiciare force in a sleepy border town.
After escaping from prison, Normand fled Paris and has been neither seen nor heard from for more than ten years. And because the Normand file has lain dormant since before she joined the force, Inspector Aliette Nouvelle has naturally assumed that everyone's favourite outlaw is dead and the case closed. But one afternoon, Commissaire Moreau drops Normand's file on her desk. The Commissaire is convinced that Normand is still very much alive and in the vicinity. Find him, he commands Aliette. Bring him in. Put him away for good.
Aliette Nouvelle is a new heroine for the 90s -- smart, single and intuitive, but more interested in quietly and non-violently getting the job done than in receiving front-page coverage for her sometimes unorthodox methods of crime-solving. She knows she is regarded as a rising star in the force and believes that her years of hard work and her excellent record are about to bear fruit. She senses, rightly, that the soon-to-retire Commissaire has chosen to pass the torch on to her. And so, although she remains skeptical, Aliette accepts his challenge. She sets out to dig up a forgotten hero. Her only clues are those she finds in the outlaw's out-of-print memoir, and in the gloomy face on a faded WANTED poster. Thus the cat and mouse game begins, and what a chase it turns out to be!
About the Author: John Brooke became fascinated by criminality and police work listening to the courtroom stories and observations of his father, a long-serving judge. Although he lives in Montreal, John makes frequent trips to France for both pleasure and research. He earns a living as a freelance writer and translator, and has also worked as a film and video editor as well as directed four films on modern dance. His poetry and short stories have been widely published and in 1998 his story "The Finer Points of Apples" won him the Journey Prize. Brooke's first Inspector Aliette Nouvelle mystery, The Voice of Aliette Nouvelle, was published in 1999, followed by All Pure Souls in 2001. He took a break from Aliette with the publication of his novel Last Days of Montreal in 2004, but returned with her in 2011 with Stifling Folds of Love, The Unknown Masterpiece in 2012, Walls of a Mind in 2013, which was shortlisted for the Arthur Ellis Best Crime Novel Award, and Tropéanos's Gun in 2015.
