By Eric Leclere — Published April 2023 

Paperback
Pocket: 10.5cm x 16.5cm — 385 pages — ISBN: 9780953556250
Click here for B-format

The 3rd in a series of stand-alone novels featuring private investigator, Xavier Lombard, ex-Paris detective in London.

A young mother is killed in the streets of London just days after asking for Xavier Lombard’s help. Her husband committed suicide, but she thinks there’s more to it. Lombard believes she’s just another grieving widow. The girl’s own mother, Maude McGinnis, disagrees and through sheer determination, invoking God Almighty, she snares Lombard into an investigation that takes him to the decadent heart of the British film world, and beyond, deeper, darker, until, on a quest of his own, he finds himself washing the stench of death from his clothes.

While there is no changing human nature, humanity never ceases to try different living arrangements. Xavier Lombard, a man of laconic disposition not immune to beauty’s seduction, hears tell of hopes and sins, is visited upon by many faces of Death, throughout moderates his own thunder, as befits a guest in a strange place.

*****

Written in the here and now, this book is a wonder. It has men, women, boys and girls in it. In all sorts of order. Some rich, some poor, some gorgeous, some crude, some faint-at-heart and some others — toddlers and much older. And hues of complexion and religion. And carnal intimacy and wrongdoing, not to forget its fair share of death and despair, all, it must be said, adequately warranted. And it also boasts cats and dogs, and donkeys and wildebeests too. And country lanes and highways and wild mountain streams and jungle waterways. And it accommodates stories, quite a few in all, about gold diggers, harvesters or the likes of killers and lovers. Indeed, this book is full of wonder. All of it is constructed with sentences, some short and some much longer, all through the power – within its punctuation – the power of words and pronouns, some possibly proscribed, some others not so, but just the same always at all times all utilised in good faith and fair ways. And for further good measure, this book likewise claims an author, for, amongst its intrigues and characters, a voice can just about be heard; here cutting in to offer a comment, or there to tell of yet unknowns.

Verily, this book is a wonder. It entertains. It bears witness. It is a mysterious stranger sitting on a train mindful of the rolling skies and horizons beyond their carriage window, yet at all time attentive to — for, no matter how the land lies, no man is an island, or such is what John Donne did do rightly say — attentive to the absurdity of terror; the horror, the fear, the fervour, the generous intolerance of the time-honoured book-burners and undying torchbearers.

On such wondrous account — to speak nothing of much of its notions — this storybook may be too unruly to please today. Still and all, maybe they’ll forgive it tomorrow.

*****