TWO FRENCH THRILLERS IN GRAND OLD STYLE, The Sleeping Car Murders & Rider on the Rain

RIDER ON THE RAIN
SÉBASTIEN JAPRISOT (tr. Linda Coverdale)
Gallic Books (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$15.95 trade paper, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: When a young woman takes justice into her own hands after a horrific attack on the French Riviera, she thinks she has got away with it. But a mysterious stranger at a wedding has other ideas...

The bus never stops in Le Cap-des-Pins. Not in autumn, when the small Riviera resort is deserted. Except today, when a man with a red bag and a disconcerting stare steps out into the rain.

His arrival will throw the life of young housewife Mellie Mau into disarray. After surviving a horrific attack, she has a dark secret to hide. But a stranger at a wedding, the enigmatic American Harry Dobbs, is determined to get the truth out of her, leading her into a game of cat and mouse with dangerous consequences...

A cool, stylish and twisty thriller from cult French noir writer Sébastien Japrisot.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: CONTENT WARNING FOR SEXUAL VIOLENCE—STIGMATIZING MENTAL ILLNESS

This is a more or less unusual project...it's a novelization of a film script that Author Japrisot wrote for a wildly successful French film. The DNA of the script is still here, in the copious dialogue tags; quite a few stage directions have survived the trip to novella-ization, too. What also shows is the very, very dated sexual politics of the day...far more horrifying than in the older Japrisot novel reviewed below.

Consider that Charles Bronson plays the male lead in the film. That the film was made in 1969, and came out in 1970. I don't think I need to get too deeply into the, um, action.

So with that warning in place, to the plot. Again its film-script DNA is on display. It is taut; it is not in the least bit deep. Its surfaces are glossy and its politics aren't particularly liberal. It has a lovely woman being abused by damned near everyone who spends even a few seconds onscreen. Americans are violent, nasty brutes; Italians are shouty abusive men; French people are supine and ineffectual.

Author Japrisot wasn't any kind of a patriot....

What's on offer here is a deeply angry story of revenge and of the toll an abusive world can extract. It's never going to be easy to read something written over fifty years ago by a bitter, outraged man without coming away from the experience a little less sure that the world's a good place filled with kind people. But in this story, the woman who exacts a condign revenge on that world is allowed a degree of freedom that would've been unthinkable even a decade earlier. Look at Janet Leigh's character in Psycho....

While it isn't an easy read, due to subject matter, it is formally interesting for its far-from-usual direct lifting of script elements in novelizing the work. It has all of Author Japrisot's strengths, the terse and pointed language and the stunningly easy to visualize settings. Because it's not a simple story, in the sense of having great resonance with dark and ugly parts of human psyches, I don't think it'll appeal to all audiences. Because it's novella length, I don't think it'll necessarily fit well into today's crime-fiction universe...the crime trend is towards bloat as much as the rest of literature is. But it's a bracing, bitter draft of revenge fantasy and devictimized womanhood.

Only not in a salubrious way.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

THE SLEEPING CAR MURDERS
SÉBASTIEN JAPRISOT (tr. Francis Price)
Gallic Books (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$14.95 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A beautiful young woman lies sprawled on her berth in the sleeping car of the night train from Marseilles to Paris. She is not in the embrace of sleep, or even in the arms of one of her many lovers. She is dead. And the unpleasant task of finding her killer is handed to an overworked, crime-weary police detective named Pierre Emile Grazziano, nicknamed Grazzi, who would rather play hide-and-seek with his little son than cat and mouse with a diabolically cunning, savage murderer.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: This is the first published crime novel from the late monadnock of French thriller writers, seeing the light of day in 1962...sixty years ago! I'd expected to be eye-rollingly impatient with the sexual politics...I was...and to find the motive for the title crime absurd...I sort-of did...and generally to find the read a pleasant time capsule but not one I could recommend.

Wrong on that score.

What Author Japrisot, ably served by Translator Price, achieved was a smartly paced and charmingly observed crime novel. I want to be clear, though, that the attitude towards women and their sexuality isn't within 21st-century best practices. I don't have a positive thing to say about that, and no, I don't want to shrug it off by saying "it's of its time." I think the way to frame the attitudes that makes me least irritably impatient is to think of this as a cautionary tale...a dead, or at least dying, set of stupid and wrong-headed ways of seeing people that has very directly contributed to terrible crimes.

What sticks with me the most is the sheer, idiotic nihilism of the crimes committed, and for such idiotic reasons. There are no excuses, of course, but the reason someone deprives another person of life...the one and only thing that can't be made good or replaced when it's taken...should always at least make some twisted kind of sense. Here, though, there is nothing, not a grain of a comprehensible motive. Like those thrill-killing boys, Leopold and Loeb.

I was utterly unable to put this debut crime novel, first published in 1962, down. It's not like a modern crime novel. There's no bloat; there's very little dialogue. The whole story's narrated, in a kind of distancing tactic, a lot like the voiceover narration of Double Indemnity, albeit it isn't the same narrator. Just the strategy, the way of telling that makes it feel like showing. And, in the end, the framing device works very, very well for the final summation of the crime.

Japrisot wasn't a hugely productive writer, having written a dozen fiction works of different lengths between 1950 and 1999. He translated works by Salinger, among others, into French; he worked in the advertising industry; he was, in short, a jobbing writer with a gift for economical storytelling. His strength lay in constructing the angle of repose for his story; he knew the slightest shift in perspective would destroy the equilibrium that a work of fiction relies on. When the shift inevitably occurs, the entire story flows out of its resting state and becomes something entirely other, a new resting state that doesn't resemble the constructed story but is all the same colors and most of the same shapes.

It is a pure pleasure to read this level of craftsmanship. By all means procure it and enjoy it for all its afternoon-filling worth.

THE ROAD TO URBINO, or let's go to Italy and commit art theft!

THE ROAD TO URBINO
ROMA TEARNE
Gallic Books
$15.95 trade paper, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A story of obsession, love and art set in Tuscany, Sri Lanka and London.

Ras, a Sri Lankan who fled his country as a child following the violent death of his mother and his father's disappearance, has committed a crime. Dogged by his past and unable to come to terms with the killing of his mother, he struggles to make a new life for himself in the UK. Alex has loved Dee since he was 19 but failed to realise that it was a love he wouldn't find again. After Dee's marriage, he too struggles to build a meaningful life for himself. But when Ras' and Alex's lives connect, each man takes a new path culminating for Ras in the theft of a della Franceso painting, while Alex comes ever closer to Dee through tragedy in her life.

Beautifully written, with a strong narrative, The Road to Urbino is the story of two very different men and their love for the women in their lives, set against the backdrop of the heartbreaking horrors of the long-running conflict in Sri Lanka.

I RECEIVED AN ARC FROM THE PUBLISHER. THANK YOU.

My Review: Similar to Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch in initial conditions...an art crime reverberates through the characters' lives, the painting that's stolen has resonances in the story's structure that only reveal themselves the deeper you get...Roma Tearne did not decide to re-write someone else's idea by any means.

When Ras, one of our main characters, escapes his war-torn country after terrible losses, he looks at the UK with the hungry eyes of a victim in search of a savior. The trouble with that, Ras, is that no external being can save you from yourself. He does experience the blessing of a peaceful country's many opportunities, and he takes advantage of them. Job as a museum curator, marriage, a family, a life...all the good stuff. The issue for Ras is, of course, the unhealed horrors of genocide live in his brain. His wife gives him a daughter, as he sees it, and he dotes on the child. Not so much on the mother. Lavish loving attention but nothing for Mama? The inevitable occurs, and the illusion of normal life is ripped apart again.

Lola, his daughter, is a case study in "when bad children happen to loving fathers." Spoiled by his undivided attention and by nature selfish, she is a Hot Mess. Listening to Daddy's stories of the Old Country is a way to get what she wants, but not in the least a way to feel connected to him or to the weird foreign place he originates. Ras isn't a reflective person, at least not at first, but he pips to his essential trapped loneliness at last. What does he do, go to a shrink? No. He goes to Italy! He will tour the countryside and Look At Art.

He does this, all right. He looks at Piero della Francesca's The Flagellation of Christ a bit wrong.

via Wikimedia
Reader, he steals the damned thing. A small-enough painting by religious standards, no more than three feet in any dimension, but...WHAT?! A museum curator steals another museum's painting?!

The shock I felt was slightly cushioned by my delight in Author Tearne's paean to Italy's sheer physical glory. It is no wonder so much great art has come from there, it is so beautiful. As I turned the pages for this second read, I was submerged in a soft golden afternoon's light and gently lapped by the waves of desire anticipating the meal I knew would come soon. (In Italy, a meal will always come soon.) This was the most delightful sensation while I'm trapped inside by COVID. I was even inclined to be forgiving of the absolutely bewildering break from reality that Ras's theft represents.

But that theft is the frame of the story, not the story. Ras, in jail in the UK, begins to speak to his solicitor Elizabeth with the intimacy and urgency of a shrink. Please, he begs, please re-connect me with my daughter! I want her to know her father is not a terrorist! A museum curator, fifty, is being called a terrorist...because he's South Asian. A white man in that cell for that crime would be a troubled citizen, count on it.

Speaking of white men...now enters the story a chap called Alex, the ex-lover of a museum colleague of Ras's. Why he's here you'll have to ask the author, I can't really see what his place is in this story. The only possible excuse I can find for Alex to exist is that he reinforces the idea that middle-aged men long for a woman. And this is where something important (leaving aside its overwhelming heteronormativity) hit me.

A talented woman writing a novel about men in crisis gives one unpleasant woman, Lola, all the ladies' speaking parts; from Elizabeth we hear stage prompts, meant to cue a dried-up actor to resume his speech. The middle-aged man at the center of it all is South Asian, at least, but honestly I can't imagine a book less likely to pass the Bechdel test. I don't think any woman speaks to another woman at all, let alone not about a man, but that's not something I was carefully looking out for.

I've mentioned before that I need to feel a character's trajectory has changed for a reading experience to fully satisfy me. This story's characters are all in mid-trajectory when we leave them, so I was a bit grumpus about that; I did finally settle myself because the fact is they're all launched in new directions. Not at all sure they'll stay on them, but they're set into motion and that's good enough for me.

In general terms, I'm not inclined to pick up books like this. I got it during my COVID infection and couldn't really focus on it. Since my backlog of unreviewed books is shocking, I needed to give it a bit of a brush-up to remind myself of the story's tenor and the characters' affects. The sneakily critical of racism nature of the story was a definite plus. The somewhat flat crime that is committed is only so because there's really just no conceivable reason for it to have happened. If I read this as a news report, I'd be eaten alive with curiosity to now WHY it occurred, probably to the point of calling the news outlet and demanding they assign an investigative reporter to ferret out the goodies.

Sadly, that doesn't occur and thus I'm left with a two-and-a-half star read that earns itself an extra star for its blissful evocation of Italy's delights. I enjoyed the read enough to review it; I'd recommend borrowing, not buying, the book if you are tempted.

VINTAGE 1954, a time-travel jeu d'esprit with heart and mischief for all

VINTAGE 1954
ANTOINE LAURAIN (tr. Jane Aitken & Emily Boyce)
Pushkin Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$13.99 ebook, available 2 September 2025

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: When Hubert Larnaudie invites some fellow residents of his Parisian apartment building to drink an exceptional bottle of 1954 Bordeaux, he has no idea of its special properties.

The following morning, Hubert finds himself waking up in 1950s Paris, as do antique restorer Magalie, mixologist Julien, and Airbnb tenant Bob from Milwaukee, who's on his first trip to Europe.

After their initial shock, the city of Edith Piaf and An American in Paris begins to work its charm on them. The four delight in getting to know the French capital during this iconic period, whilst also playing with the possibilities that time travel allows.

But, ultimately, they need to work out how to get back to 2017. And the key lies in a legendary story and the vineyards of the Chateau St Antoine...

THE PUBLISHER PROVIDED ME WITH A DRC VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: There's a lot to be said, in this Giddy Season, for retreating to your phone and reading something unchallenging, fun, and still...outside the norm, able to show you something you wouldn't expect to get while being fluffed. This story, by a born-and-bred Parisian (it's like being a multigeneration Manhattanite is in the US), is a time-travel fantasy about les jadis. First we must have The Couple. They are Julien, grandson of a man who saw a flying saucer...twice!...and Magalie, a Goth chick. Both are born and raised in Paris, though not of Old Families. They're perfect for each other. They just don't know it yet. They live in little apartments at 18, Rue Edgar-Charillier; Magalie has a studio on the ground floor where she plies her trade as an antiques restorer. Julien is a mixologist at Harry's New York bar, a legendary watering hole and now tourist spot. They're the modern young Parisians, not beholden to bureaucracy or Big Business, but nimble gig-economy hustlers.

Then we have Tradition. He (of course) is duty, honor, and boredom personified in Hubert Larnaudie. He is also a bombastic old Gaul:

‘Because of my position as chairman of the management committee, and my family history, it falls to me to defend … our patrimony!’ he concluded emphatically.

Hubert, dreary sort that he is, owns an apartment in a building once his own family's. But that means he has a LOT of stuff in his various storage spaces. This will become important. He is a bureaucrat, mais naturellement, a property management managerial drone; he also sits on the apartment house's board. But of course.

Then, to balance our wheel, we must have The Stranger. Bob from Milwaukee is, well, a very Euro vision of the Good-Hearted American:

‘Didn’t the Americans take Lafayette’s cash during the War of Independence?’ ‘Yes …’ Hubert conceded. ‘Well, consider me your Lafayette,’ Bob said resolutely.

He's in Paris without his deeply beloved wife, Goldie, whose coma is irreversible and who, countless people tell him, would insist he use the tickets to Paris that they'd intended to use for their anniversary. Alone in Paris, desperately sad, Bob's Airbnb apartment is in the building...and thus are our time travelers assembled.

What happens is the dream of a UFOlogist's dream. Julien's grandfather's fame resulting from his 1954 UFO encounter in a Saint-Antoine vineyard is family lore; but Larnaudie happens to have a bottle of it in his cellar (from which he has only that day needed rescuing by the American and his two fellow tenants). The four share the bottle, totter off to their separate couches...and awake in the same building, only somehow in 1954! They leave the 21st century as they step outside.

Audrey Hepburn. Harry's New York Bar, with Harry MacElhone in it. Robert Doisneau. Les Halles intact, just as Napoleon III saw them last. Piaf and Gabin having dinner together!! What a bloody glorious bottle of wine! Of course the time travelers are utterly bumfuzzled, broke, and homeless. This problem is resolved by Bob the American changing his American money, famously unchanged in looks for generations, into the old francs in use in 1954. (Never mind the big-head portraits on the bills we've got now! Go with it.) And Hubert knows the apartment across from his grand-père, now his own, is empty because family lore says the cousin it belonged to was in Chile...for twenty-five years! All Hubert needs to do is get the key from the concierge by pretending to be the cousin. Shelter = solved.

Only the concierge remembers the cousin...she proves to be elozable, though, so some francs later the four get to lay their weary heads down. And from there...the problem of how to get back to 2017 (why would they want to, I wonder) looms large until Julien recalls a fictional 1950s absent-minded professor called Charles Arpajon, whose 1955 (not a typo) book on UFOs as time-travel machines not space-travel ones he has read. The Scooby-group hotfoots their way to the train for the Saint-Antoine vineyard where the UFO sighting is about to take place....

I don't need to tell you the rest, you know we're all going to be okay in the end. The suspense here is minimal at best. What the point of this read is: Comfort. Four 2017 people Forrest-Gump their way through 1954 Paris, then the lost agrarian joys of the pays et temps perdu. It is a gentle and delightful caper through time, if not space. The author, whose previous whimsical works I would now like to read, is very Britishly translated into vernacular British..."sellotape" says it all...with four foul, reeking w-bombs to ruin my read. Why on this wide green Earth are there still people using "to w-i-n-k" as though it meant something clever? It's creepy.

But aside from that cavil, my thoughts on this book's appeal center on its ability to lull your anxiety centers and soothe your story cravings while delivering resolutions to all problems for all the people we've invested our three hours in. Really welcome in the Silly Season of family gatherings, work parties, and suchlike exhaustions. Load the Kindlebook onto your phone for $9.50, read it in bits and snatches...you'll recall everything because it's all right there.

Satisfying, savorable civet for your ease and delectation.