Words and books. Toulouse city of spies – Polars. our selection
Here is a new collection, Terresombres, which applies a principle as simple as it is welcome: to place detective stories in a determined local context and, in doing so, enhance them. For “The Opening of Hostilities”, Christian Authier chose Toulouse, where he lives. And to go back in time, since the action of his novel takes place in the early 90s. The situation in the Balkans was then particularly violent and confused. Croatia has already broken ties with Yugoslavia, which is now only Serbia, and in Bosnia, the fighting between the various religious communities justifies the most horrible massacres.
It is in this context that Frédéric Berthet, a professor of literature at the university of Mirail, moreover without history or illusions, is pushed by one of his students. Croatian, he turns out to be linked by an uncle to a network of arms traffickers, for the benefit of their country in the process of reconstitution. The uncle having been executed and the young man fearing for his life, he asks the teacher to recover compromising documents for the network in question. Frédéric Berthet, who has unsuspected reserves of naivety, accepts the mission. It earned him to find himself at the heart of a series of settling of scores. In fact, they involve various French espionage and counterintelligence secret services, invited to compete in a troubled game. Moreover, if the cynicism of these manipulation professionals is beyond doubt, it is difficult to understand who wants what and why.
An instrumentalization
With what is indicated there, there was certainly enough to imagine a breathless story, with multiple twists. This is not the case. Because the author, especially by following in the professor’s footsteps, is much more attached to losing us in an imbroglio whose character understands neither the tenants nor the outcomes, until he grasps how much he has been instrumentalized.
Thus, this story is ultimately quite languid, but it leaves the author plenty of time to tell us about this city and its surroundings, as he remembers it and as he likes it. Which makes reading fun, if not mind-blowing. There are indeed a few corpses on the way, but they are evoked as so many administrative contingencies that intelligence officials sow in their path, without paying more attention to them. This novel is certainly not to their advantage and it is also in this that it has something disconcerting.
The opening of hostilities. By Christian Authier. Editions of the Presses de la Cité. Darklands collection. €20.