Police and ambulance are at the scene of a two-car collision on the A35 at Offwell, Honiton, police have now confirmed. Police are appealing for witnesses and would like to hear from anyone who saw either vehicle prior to the incident or witnessed the collision itself. This novel – like Adele Bedeau – reintroduces the reader to Georges Gorski, the police chief of an Alsace town who has married above his station…and is now estranged from his wife. When a wealthy solicitor named Bertrand Barhelme suffers a fatal car crash, Georges Gorski must deliver the news to his youngish widow, Lucette, and their teenage son Raymond. This novel is situated in Saint-Louis in France. It is is structured in two parts. The first part is the plot about how the death of Bertrand Barthelme during a car crash affects the lives of the two main protagonists. The first protagonist is Georges Gorski, a senior officer in the St Louis police force who is investigating the crash. The second is Raymond Barthelme, the son of Bertrand Barthelme. A spokesperson said: "Police were called to reports of a road traffic collision involving two cars on the A35 near Axminster at around 11.50am today [23 April].

Graeme Macrae Burnet has written a book purported to be a translation of a manuscript (one of two) sent to a publisher by fictional writer, Raymond Burnet after he committed suicide. The novel is a literary mystery in the classic French style of Georges Simenon, creator of fictional French detective Jules Maigret. 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. There were 1,390 reported road deaths in Britain from June 2020 to June 2020, data from the Ministry of Transport shows.This is on the face of it a crime novel, but the quality of the writing, the depth of the characterisation, the creation of place and time and the intelligence of the game the author plays with the reader all raise it so that it sits easily into the literary fiction category, in my opinion at the highest level. Motorists are being advised to expect delays. Diversions have been set up taking drivers through Bridport with motorists told to allow extra time for their journey.

Finally, I would like to thank the public for their patience while the road closures were in place. These were absolutely necessary to allow us to carry out a thorough examination of the scene." Police have confirmed they were called at 5.22am to reports of a very serious injury road traffic collision on the A35 at Bridport involving a lorry and another vehicle. Gorski had no time for the idea of human nature. It was a meaningless idea people used to absolve themselves of responsibility for their own actions… Briskly written within an unobtrusive literary frame, this seductive novel works on multiple levels.’

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Officers investigating the fatal crash near Dorchester are appealing for witnesses or anyone with dashcam footage to come forward. A spokeswoman for the South Western Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust (SWASFT) said: “We were called at 2.17pm to an incident near Puddletown and sent three double-crewed land ambulances, a critical care car, an operations officer, a rapid response vehicle and an air ambulance." A five-year-old girl inside the BMW died while an eight-year-old girl who was in the same car remains in hospital with serious injuries. When Bertrand Barthelme runs his car off the A35 into a tree one evening and dies, Inspector Georges Gorski has no reason to think it was anything other than an unfortunate accident. But Barthelme's widow thinks there's something odd about her husband having been at that spot at that time and asks Gorski to look into it a bit more. Mme Barthelme is an attractive 40-something with more than a touch of the femme fatale in this first meeting, so Gorski finds himself agreeing. Meantime, Barthelme's 17-year-old son Raymond starts a kind of investigation of his own, in an attempt to learn more about the father with whom he had always had a rather cold, distant relationship. Both investigations will head off in unexpected directions.

Once again Graeme Macrae Burnet adds a foreword and afterword which explain how the story is a rediscovered lost manuscript by the book's actual author, Raymond Brunet (who also wrote The Disappearance of Adèle Bedeau). It all adds another layer of playfulness to a very satisfying read. The mystery at the centre of the book is fairly straightforward. A lawyer, Bertrand Barthelme, in a small French town is killed in what looks an accident late at night but on a road he shouldn't be on if he was where he told his wife. When Chief Inspector Georges Gorski informs the man's young and attractive wife of his death, she asks him to find out where her husband had been that night. Bertrand's 17 year old son, Raymond decides to carry out his own investigation into his father's movements that night.

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On the same day, three people were killed in a car crash on a busy dual-carriageway on the A1 near Stamford, Lincolnshire. The BMW driver and a female passenger, both in their thirties and from the same family, and the Land Rover driver, in her fifties, have been treated for their non-life-threatening injuries.