As with Adele Budeau, we learn in the Forward (and more in the Afterword) that this detective story was actually one of two outstanding manuscripts by the “acclaimed” (fictional) author, Raymond Brunet, delivered to the publisher on the day of his mother’s death. She asked him to find out why her husband was on the A35 when to her knowledge he had been out to dinner with colleagues, which meant he’d be nowhere near the A35 when driving home. If asked how one’s business is doing, the customary response is: ‘Could be worse,’ or ‘Just about surviving. His latest novel, Case Study has been longlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize, shortlisted for the Ned Kelly International Crime Prize and longlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize. The chief inspector feels inferior to the big-time cop and is desperate to impress him with his investigative skills.

He discusses Sartre and experiences a frisson of excitement when considering self-harm – the drawing of blood to shock and rebel. When several members of the ring soon turn up dead, Billy abruptly pulls Kate out, blowing her cover.

Best known for his dazzling Booker-shortlisted second novel, His Bloody Project (2015), he is also the author of two novels set in France and written in a style influenced by the Belgian novelist Georges Simenon: The Disappearance of Adele Bedeau (2014) and The Accident on the A35 (2017). Although, I haven't read any of Simenon's books I have seen the TV series Maigret based on the books and can see that the this novel captures the shadowy detective and the dark, smoky scenes in cafes and nightclubs of Maigret's world.

Macrae Burnet gives the reader a crime novel that is much more about the characters than about the crime being solved.In the absolutely packed Act II, the dark fantasy resumes and the Sandman expands into the French Revolution, ancient Rome, 19th-century San Francisco, eighth-century Baghdad, and beyond.