...then here's another pair of dramatic thrillers in the Black mould...
Maigret in Court by Georges Simenon
In a great courtroom drama, Maigret has to explain why he does not believe that Gaston Meurant was capable of slitting his aunt's throat for money and smothering a small child. But in saving him from the gallows, Maigret must expose some dark secrets about Meurant's life. This is a painful story of an oppressive domestic tragedy and the compassionate insight of a remarkable detective. Muriel Spark, writing in the Sunday Times, said of the novel: “A truly wonderful writer ...marvellously readable - lucid, simple, absolutely in tune with that world he creates of run-down hotels, cold, dark barges, quayside canal-taverns, lurking prostitutes, pot-bellied burghers, taciturn youths, slippery barmen.”
In the Woods by Tana French
When he was twelve years old, Adam Ryan went playing in the woods one day with his two best friends. He never saw them again. Their bodies were never found, and Adam himself was discovered with his back pressed against an oak tree and his shoes filled with blood. He had no memory of what had happened. Twenty years on, Rob Ryan - the child who came back - is a detective in the Dublin police force. He's changed his name. No one knows about his past. Then a little girl's body is found at the site of the old tragedy and Rob is drawn back into the mystery. Knowing that he would be thrown off the case if his past were revealed, Rob takes a fateful decision to keep quiet but hopes that he might also solve the twenty-year-old mystery of the woods.
