When solicitor Bertrand Barthelme is killed in a car accident on the A35, a road that runs between Strasbourg and Saint-Louis in the Alsace region of France, Chief Inspector Georges Gorski of the Saint-Louis police is called to the scene. Bertrand’s car ran off the road and hit a tree. So far so routine. But then Madame Barthelme mentions that her husband always dined with colleagues every Tuesday evening at a restaurant in Saint-Louis and should not have been anywhere near the A35. She and her teenage son Raymond seem oddly unmoved by his death.

It’s these irregularities – and not Madame Barthelme’s prettiness, Gorski tells himself, although she is a welcome distraction following his wife’s walkout – that prompts the chief inspector to start making enquiries. The mystery surrounding Bertrand’s death deepens when it appears that he could have been involved in the unsolved murder of a woman in Strasbourg. Meanwhile, Raymond finds an address on an old slip of paper in his father’s study and embarks on his own quest to uncover his father’s secrets.

This novel revisits Gorski, who first appeared in Burnet’s debut novel, The Disappearance of Adèle Bedeau (written before his Booker shortlisted novel His Bloody Project). The book is ostensibly a translation by Burnet of French writer Raymond Brunet, who killed himself after publishing Adèle Bedeau. It’s playfully clever rather than being conceited, and the question of whether the story is true or not is quickly forgotten as the reader becomes absorbed in the unfolding mystery.

This engrossing literary thriller combines a page-turning crime story with a deeper meditation on life and existence that delves beyond the respectable veneer of a provincial French town and the mundane lives of its inhabitants. It’s a rewarding read that ends with the promise of another Gorski novel to come.

Reviewed by Melinda Woledge