Clovis Reynolds, a
former rock music critic, now works in the Maine et Loire, in the
scrap yard belonging to Max Rentchler. The atmosphere there is
rather gloomy: Max hasn't got over the death of his wife Consuela
and Clovis is still haunted by having to confine his daughter Lucy.
So when somebody kills their dogs, and then when their new apprentice
Mahmoud is kidnapped, Clovis convinces Max to tell him where his
problems come from : a few weeks earlier, they've
kept a big bag of drugs they found in a wreck. Its real recipient
is trying to get it back at all cost. All alone and with nothing
to lose, - doesn't Clovis say : « You know Max,
it's hard to admit that you're dead while being yet still alive » -
the two scrap dealers decide to take the problem in their own hands.
But an ex-journalist and a scrap dealer are not exactly the best
persons to solve kidnapping and drug dealing troubles. The end will
be rather chaotic. The reader very soon becomes attached to the characters,
Max, the old grumpy gipsy, a survivor of the death camps, and Clovis,
the journalist who has seen it all. Their friendship and rough tenderness
gives a great human touch to the story. The dullness of this ballad
being still underlined by the gray and rainy atmosphere of this Western
region of France. A much less rocky novel than the previous ones
by this author, the tone of the book is more bluesy, of the kind
of blues where guitars cry in the night. Moreover, Luc Baranger takes
advantage of the many asides in the narrative to provide us with
the ideal sound track to go with the reading of the novel.
PS: Among others, Luc
Baranger has already given us the first adventure of Clovis Reynolds
in "Backstage" published in 2001 at
the La Baleine editions. He is also (among other things) the translator
of the hilarious Christopher Moore.
