The Disappearance of Adèle Bedeau

October 1, 2017

While one definitely would not want to weekend in Saint-Louis, a nondescript French town on the Swiss border, reading a Georges Simenon-flavored novel about the place and its peculiar inhabitants is a different matter. This exquisitely fashioned cat-and-mouse game pits mouse Manfred Baumann, a bank manager who seems as dependable as a post, against local gendarme Georges Gorski, who's saddled with a wife who constantly undermines him and haunted by a case from early in his career. In that instance, a woman's disappearance was blamed on a convenient tramp who, tired of living rough, welcomed jail time. Currently, Manfred obsessively retires after work to a cafe where he has the same order every evening and stares after the sullen but voluptuous waitress Adele. When she disappears, Manfred seems an almost too likely suspect. Is Gorski simply repeating his earlier error? Or is Manfred more than he appears? When a third woman disappears from that hothouse of a town, what then? VERDICT There's more than enough existential dread and guilt to go around in this whip-smart metafictional novel by the author of the acclaimed His Bloody Project, short-listed for 2016's Man Booker Prize. It's a novel best devoured while wearing a trench coat, its collar upturned, and puffing on a Gauloises cigarette.--Bob Lunn, Kansas City, MO

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