About
Reviews
Search
Submit
Home

Mystery Books for Sale

[ Home ]
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]


  

BRED TO KILL
by Franck Thilliez and Mark Polizzotti, trans.
Viking, January 2015
384 pages
$27.95
ISBN: 0670025976


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

In Franck Thilliez's latest thriller, BRED TO KILL, we again follow the investigations of detective Franck Sharko, who first appeared in this author's SYNDROME E. At this current book's start, Sharko is in bad shape both physically and emotionally. A terrible crime occurred that involved the twin daughters of another police officer, Lucie Henebelle. Sharko is a personal wreck, and we only gradually learn what happened and what his involvement was both in those events and with Lucie. He is under the care of a psychiatrist and is also at odds with his supervisors whom he seems to enjoy taunting.

Gregory Carnot, the violent murderer of one of the twins, commits suicide in his cell after drawing an elaborate picture on the wall. The picture is upside down. The killer is also left-handed, and both of these things, the upside-down pictures and the left-hand dominance, turn out to be important to discovering why he committed his crimes. Other people are killed as the story progresses—a young graduate assistant in a primate lab, a teenage couple, a father and son, and a scientist who has written a book on eugenics. The graduate assistant was involved in some mysterious research that led her to travel to prisons in Mexico and eventually to the Amazon. The author layers one mystery on top of another, and we do not even know that some of these exist until they are solved. This is the case with Lucie, who is suffering greatly because of her loss. She will not rest until she has solved the riddle of the violence, and she too ends up on a strange Amazonian voyage to a tribe that has been hidden from the outside world.

This book touches on various scientific areas and theories, including anthropology, genetics and eugenics. Scientists discover a virus that causes extreme violence and is linked not only to left-hand dominance, but also to lacto-intolerance. Tracing these things allows Sharko to discover an evil scheme of genetic engineering, a form of eugenics designed to wipe out the aging population. Along the way, the reader is given a scientific education in retroviruses, DNA and inheritance.

This book has many similarities to the first Sharko adventure. It is clear that the author writes international thrillers that do not respect borders or time periods and his intrigues have elements that threaten humanity, not just a few individuals. At times, the many threads of the plot are a bit hard to follow, but the uniqueness of the tale keeps the reader engaged. Franck Thilliez has a rich imagination and it will be interesting to see what strange cases he next devises for his detective Sharko to unravel.

§ Anne Corey is a writer, poet, teacher and botanical artist in New York's Hudson Valley.

Reviewed by Anne Corey, January 2015

[ Top ]


QUICK SEARCH:

 

Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
[ Home ]