2024-01-28 10:37:00
In his new noir novel, “Dolores or the Bellies of Dogs”, Alexandre Civico sketches a serial killer in high heels, a chilling text which is bathed in a “sewer sadness”.
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“When she walked into the room, she sucked it up.” On one side of the table, in a brightly lit parlor, has just sat Dolorès Leal Mayor, accused of having murdered around ten men. Opposite her, Antoine Petit, a cocaine addict psychiatrist, remains speechless in front of this atypical beauty. The doctor is frowned upon by his superiors and charged by a cynical judge to quickly declare the young woman irresponsible. If he is not the type to make waves, she is a tigress, an angry girl, locked in a prison that resembles the Stations of the Cross.
Dolores has a relentless method. She scours professional salons, high heels and excessive makeup, accompanies the “rednecks with Rolexes” to nightclubs who dream of having sex with her, then she kills this pathetic elite with delight. Once, ten times, Dolores repeats the same criminal actions and when the press takes an interest in her story, the young woman is described as a terrorist who punishes the rich, a star that we begin to imitate. “When the first murder that I didn’t commit appeared, it was very funny to me,” she explains.
A bit like in his previous novel, Atmore Alabama (Babel noir, 2021), but far from the America he placed as a backdrop, Alexandre Civico advances in a dark world that freezes you. Beyond the descriptions of prison life, the indifference of Dolores and the apparent mediocrity of the shrink, the author describes a society that is on fire. He keeps his writing dry to suggest the suffocation of these two characters who should never have met, speaks of a “sewer sadness” to summarize their destiny but surprises the reader with an unexpected ending.
Dolores or the belly of dogs, Alexandre Civico, Actes Sud editions, 192pp, €19.90
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