The first volume of the new series by the duo Camut & Hug, W3 – The Smile of the Hanged, was published last May by Télémaque editions. An unexpected four-hand thriller, Nice Premium delves into the depths of human perversion, W3 being the voice of innocents with crushed destinies.
Lara Mendès, a TV columnist, works on a burning topic, the sexual deviations associated with new pornographies. Coming back from a libertine party, she disappears at a highway rest area.
At the same time, Sookie Castel investigates a suspicious triple hanging. A family suicide? A murder followed by a suicide? Sookie is not satisfied with the way the investigation is going and throws herself wholeheartedly into the case.
Lara’s relatives, disillusioned by police inaction, join forces with Léon Castel, Sookie’s father, president of a victims’ association and a member of the Guild of Troublemakers.
750 pages that immerse us directly into the world of sexual deviations and violence against women. The reader quickly faces this brutal reality, as Lara Mendès is abducted right from the first chapter. This novel, dense in both subject and characters, is perfectly crafted. Beautifully written by Jérôme Camut & Nathalie Hug, a writer couple who feed off each other “Inventing a story that holds up is not simple. Together, we benefit from two worlds, two experiences, two personalities.”
Each chapter of W3 centers on a character, with four main heroes – Lara, Léon, Sookie, and Valentin, Lara’s younger brother, along with a multitude of secondary characters. W3 depends on them as much as on a well-developed plot. Hervé, Arnaud de Battz, Egon Zeller, Solange, Yanna, Rodolphe Craven all contribute to the story. A small detail, every chapter begins with a character’s name in bold.
Chronologically, the story unfolds between Saturday, June 16, and Monday, July 23, a short period for intense and painful events. We follow Lara Mendès’s tale with emotion, Léon’s with a smile, and Sookie’s with pain. The story balances between offbeat moments, mainly with Léon and Hervé, and much darker ones. The authors do not spare the reader, and some passages can be difficult to read. This duality makes W3 an excellent book, not just a very good thriller. The characters are endearing, funny, and above all, unexpected.
This first volume of the W3 series lays the foundation of a complex plot; the novel’s end takes a deeper turn, with characters intricately linked and committed to denouncing the perversity of influential men who buy women and children to satisfy their basest instincts.
W3 is an intelligent critique of sexual deviance, the intrusion of new technologies as a means of pressure recorded in intimate situations, and the regular violence against women in developed countries. The character Ilya Kalinine is the major suspense point towards the end of The Smile of the Hanged, criminal yet avenger, appearing in only a few pages, but his importance and mystery grow.
Readers eager to know more about the adventures of these characters will have to wait a bit; the release of the second volume is scheduled for 2014, though no specific time frame has been defined.
