Toulouse. Cédric Sire: “In my books, horror is my engine”
Cédric Sire returns with “La Saignée”, a macabre and violent plunge into the middle of the “Dark Web”. As always with the Toulousain we shudder and we tremble.
The Toulousain Cédric Sire, enfant terrible of the French thriller, will meet again this weekend at the Toulouse Polars du Sud festival, at the Renaissance forum.
You like to play with our nerves and our fears! Live murders, unbearable tortures, on one takes the breath away …
Yes, but I don’t find these torture scenes so unbearable! Horror is my driving force and “La Saignée” is no exception to the rule, but above all I was attached to the characters, to their journey. It’s a novel about obsession, and probably one of my books where there are the most characters. They all have an obsession that devours them, a revenge to take, in particular this cop and this boxer, Estel, who wants to have a second chance.
This dive into the “Dark Web” and the terrifying “Red Rooms” is well documented …
The “Red Rooms” are a myth, arguably the most terrible on the Dark Web. Basically, someone pays a lot of money in cryptocurrency for an executioner to torture a person until death. I took some liberties, but it is indeed a sordid environment …
When you are Cédric Sire, do you feel obliged to always go further into the macabre, into the gore?
I am aware of having the image of a writer who tells intense and horrible stories but, sincerely, I think that the real violence of this book is above all psychological and I am convinced that “The Bleeding” is my best book. more general public. My goal is to entertain, and I do not impose anything on myself, except to find the story that I would like to read, the puzzle that I would like to reconstruct.
The violence that haunts each of your books contrasts with the man you are. Where does this violence come from?
She’s surely cathartic and I do my therapy from book to book – all writers, for that matter. I have no violence in me, I only have existential questions. I think I have remained the child who loves to listen and read stories. I write fun books, to entertain and not to talk about the big problems of the world. I just want people to like my stories and not want to put the book down – like I do when I’m trapped in a great story.
In Polars du Sud, the queues for your fans are always very dense …
It is important for me to be close to my readers, we have the same passion. I write for people: if they don’t read me, my books don’t exist and trees have been felled for nothing!