Don’t Let Go by Michel Bussi
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
My wife read the French version, but my French isn’t that good, so I followed her recommendation and got the English version. The translation is excellent. Martial and Liane Bellion are lying about the pool at a resort on Réunion Island, a department of France. Liane goes up to the room and is not seen again. Martial has a friend watch his young daughter while he goes looking for her. He reports her missing to the police. When the police arrive, they find signs of a struggle and blood in the Bellions’ room. Martial confesses to having borrowed a laundry cart from a maid and having wheeled it down to the car park. A knife is missing from his barbecue kit, a knife that shows up in another body nearby. Then he flees with his daughter. Open and shut case, right? Well, maybe.
Aja, a mixed race Creole captain and Christos, a lusty, pot-smoking forensic-trained second lieutenant are on the case. The setting is exotic, the characters interesting, the mystery deep. There is the suspense of the chase as the police try to find Martial and Sopha and a plot you won’t figure out. The twists fooled me almost to the end. The people who die and those who live aren’t who you expect. I spent more than a little time looking up Réunion, Mauritius, and the Seychelles, which were mere names I’d heard before this, as well as dodo birds and papangues. This is the most entertaining book I’ve read in quite some time.