Jacquot and the Angel Book

With Jacquot and the Angel, Martin O'Brien continues to build on the promise shown in the vivid and atmospheric Jacquot and the Waterman, a crime novel that established the author as a very individual talent in an overcrowded field. The earlier book was particularly evocative in the passages describing the sultry, down at-heel-port in which all strata of society uneasily coexisted, and the Marseilles setting was one of the chief pleasures of the book. In Jacquot and the Angel, we are into multiple murder territory, with a moneyed German family living in Provence brutally slain in a shotgun massacre. Chief Inspector Daniel Jacquot of the Cavaillon Regional Crime Squad is assigned to the case, and finds that there are resonances stretching as far back as the Second World War. Several of the villagers bear bitter memories of wartime atrocities, and this will prove to be highly significant. An enigmatic young woman arrives, and her help in the case appears to offer something of a breakthrough. But what is the extent of her involvement? As the trail is tracked back over the years, Jacquot is disturbed to find that his own family had a key role in the events which so concern him now. There is more here than a simple police procedural (although those aspect are handled with the aplomb we expect from Martin O'Brien); the personal involvement of his tenacious copper is a key element, as is his relationship with the young woman caught up in the case. But as much as in the author’s earlier work, it's the brilliantly sustained conjuring of French country life that makes Jacquot and the Angel so distinctive. There are an awful lot of literary foreign coppers vying for our attention at the moment, but Martin O'Brien has created one who very much looks like he's here for the long haul. --Barry ForshawRead More