17 October 1961: French police open fire upon a demonstration of Algerians in
Paris. Roger Thiraud, a history teacher, is deliberately shot dead at close quarters. Neither his death, nor that of an unknown number of protestors is ever properly investigated.
Summer 1982: Roger’s son, Bernard, is investigating something dangerous, when he too is shot at close range in Toulouse.
Enter Inspector Cadin, who has been dealing with a grave-diggers’ strike and the forging of official summonses which are making the local bureaucracy look foolish. This murder gives him something to really get his teeth into. He doesn’t believe it was a coincidence that Thiraud père et fils were killed in such a similar way and soon makes his way to Paris to investigate the first murder before returning to Toulouse to understand why both men were killed.
Almost forty years after its publication, some of what happens is quite obvious to anyone with the right knowledge of modern French history (one name I knew I recognised but couldn’t quite place) but the first readers would have been shocked by the light shed on two dark chapters in France’s national story. As with any good historical novel, it made me want to find out more about the events that the cases are based upon.
I had thought Cadin was a one-off character but the 100 Greatest Literary Detectives explains that he appears in three other novels and a book of short stories – sadly none of these have been translated into English.
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