The Accident on the A35: An Inspector Gorski Investigation

The telephone on the desk rings. It's for CI Georges Gorski of the Saint-Louis police. A Mercedes has skidded off the A35, a French trunk road running between bustling Strasbourg and the byway that is Saint-Louis. The sole occupant, prominent local lawyer Bertrand Barthelme, has been killed. Many would instantly dismiss it as an accident, but that's not Gorski's way. He plods on, asking sometimes embarrassing questions. Why does Barthelme's considerably younger wife seem so restrained upon hearing the news? What to make of their son's existential airs, as thick as the cigarette smoke in the local cafés? And what was Barthelme doing on that road? Burnet (The Disappearance of Adèle Bedeau) lends metafictional zip to the novel's foreword and afterword, and what's in between is noir deep down to its dark roots. There's the merry widow, the hangdog detective, and the John Paul Sartre-obsessed son who undertakes his own parallel investigation. A host of distinctive bit players, all of whom have been in their roles their whole lives, further populate this Georges Simenon novel as refracted through the lens of French film director Georges Clouzot.