After the publication last year of Thanatea (available in pocket format), the dark star of French crime fiction returns with the release on January 11th at Fleuve Éditions of Black as the Storm, a thriller where lightning is the murder weapon and the killer hides in the storm. Beware, storm warning!
On the island of Oléron, at the beginning of the tourist season, several bodies are found, tied to metal stakes and facing the ocean. The murder weapon is most unusual as the victims have all been struck by lightning…
Based in La Rochelle, Captain Max Fontaine of the SRPJ and his deputy, Thomas Bergerac, are tasked with the investigation. Their priority is to identify the victims to find a common link between them to trace back to the killer. But things will not be so simple for Max Fontaine, who is about to face a terrible personal ordeal that risks making him lose the investigation and his mind…
The idyllic setting of the island of Oléron is the stage for a series of surprising murders: the victims are securely tied to metal stakes, which are perfect conductors of electricity, and have been struck during a violent storm. Seven bodies for a single killer? Captain Fontaine, who has been assigned the case, doubts it, but this is only the beginning of an investigation that promises to be tense and dark.
Why this unusual modus operandi and so difficult to carry out? What is the link between all these victims? Questions that the La Rochelle police team, as well as the readers, will ask; and thanks to the author’s writing, both will quickly be plunged into this electric atmosphere!
In the Eye of the Storm
With the ultra-precise and highly visual writing of Sonja Delzongle, the story is led at breakneck speed, pushing the reader to eagerly turn the pages of Black as the Storm. But one must not let their guard down as a secondary plot, which will intimately affect the hero, will complement this thriller.
The characters are another strong point of the novel and will enrich the story, led by Captain Max Fontaine, a transgender cop at the heart of a personal drama; but also Bénédicte, a lightning survivor, Thomas, Max’s deputy, Farida, a vengeful colleague, and Théo, a storm-chasing photographer, along with his sister Éléonore.
Through this novel, the author introduces us to a little-known and scarcely studied biomedical theme: keraunopathology, which analyzes the consequences of lightning on the human body, whether physical sequelae or cognitive abilities that appear after a lightning strike. Thus, there are the struck, who die after being hit by lightning, and the struck-survivors who survive lightning impacts.
With this new thriller, Sonja Delzongle offers a captivating story, in a complex and original investigation, where the storm echoes the inner tempests of its hero.
To learn more about the struck-survivors: The consequences of lightning on the human body
