2023-10-11 20:41:22
In his new thriller, Olivier Merle does not skimp on anything that can provoke horror and fear. Thrills guaranteed.
“I received a thriller that seems very sticky to me, Olivier Merle’s Entrailles du mal…” a colleague warned us about ten days ago. We had also just received the novel and its back cover, promising us a “plunge into hell” and a hatred “so powerful and so implacable that it can only be resolved by death”, abounded in this sense. Especially since the previous volume of the adventures of Commander Grimm (the Manor of the Sacrifices, published last year) had already pitted the police officer against a particularly abject psychopathic killer… So go for a new dive into a moist universe oozing fear and anxiety.
This time, it is the hero himself who is the target of anonymous threats. “Are you proud of what you did? The time of reckoning has come,” he received in his mailbox one evening. Having enemies when you are a police officer is hardly surprising, but becoming the target of a mysterious individual who knows your address, has your telephone number and seems to be unaware of the slightest of your actions is another matter… Especially when you are unable to imagine who could be so angry with you… “The worst part was not understanding what he was accused of and not having the slightest hypothesis about the identity of the accuser. These questions played over and over in his head and had a devastating effect on his morale. Fear was taking hold of him. Was he in danger of being shot down in the street like a dog? When he went to bed, Grimm thought that he had left his service weapon at the PJ and that he had nothing to defend himself with…”
Desperate situations
Supported by his team, Hubert Grimm quickly finds himself confronted with the murky world of a dangerous Serbian pimp. An “unofficial” investigation (main victim, he was removed from the case) parasitized by a war of services, the low blows of a crooked colleague, a chaotic family life and the difficulty for this police officer on edge to respect the hierarchy and basic cautionary instructions – pushing him into often desperate situations: “He emerged slowly and, after a few reflex movements, opened his eyes. Black, the black was complete. […] The first urgency was to see. Finally finding out where he was. He turned on his cell phone and shone the light on the floor. Horror ! The ground was littered with bones. What he had taken for shattered pottery were in reality the remains of dislocated bodies, piled up as if in a mass grave. It was with a broken skull that he managed to free himself.”
Ultimately, it is from his own past, a damaged childhood that he would have preferred to forget, that the keys to the enigma will emerge. And the final face-to-face with this shadowy enemy will live up to the policeman’s worst nightmares. The time of reckoning has come.
The bowels of evil, by Olivier Merle, XO editions, 344 pp., 20.90 euros
#bowels #evil #depths #chaos #Libération