Released in the fall, the new novel by Franck Thilliez immerses readers in the milieu of treasure hunts: players face off in the heart of an abandoned psychiatric complex, and the oppressive atmosphere will inevitably reveal the participants’ flaws and secrets. Thrills and chills guaranteed! Nice Premium takes you to Swannesong…
Ilan and his ex-girlfriend Chloé are fans of treasure hunts and role-playing games. Very active before their breakup, Ilan gradually distanced himself from this peculiar world. But when Chloé returns a year later, announcing she found the entrance to the famous game Paranoia, a chimera of which no one knows anything but promises €300,000 for the winner, his resolve wavers.
Haunted by the disappearance of his parents at sea, isolated, depressed, and tormented by increasingly disturbing nightmares, Ilan ends up following Chloé into the hell of Paranoia…
Paranoia opens its doors wide for us, and being constructed by Franck Thilliez, these doors won’t reveal all their secrets too soon. Indeed, Puzzle is a psychological novel with a perfectly constructed plot, and like a genuine puzzle, one must reach the last page to grasp its full scope.
The recognizable pen of Franck Thilliez allows us to follow Ilan’s progress in the Paranoia game, a game that begins well before his arrival at Swanessong. The chapters are fluid, and the author knows how to make the reader eager to turn to the next page. The third-person narrative allows us to follow all the participants and is interspersed with enigmatic passages between a psychiatrist and her patient, Lucas Chardon.
Ilan is a sensitive character, pleasant to follow, touching as we sense he is haunted by the pain caused by his parents’ disappearance. We feel that he is not ready to make all the sacrifices for Paranoia, unlike the other contestants. Some characters could have been more developed, particularly Naomie Fée and Ray Leprince, while Chloé is a bit harder to pin down. Very disturbed, the character of Gygax is also one of the most interesting. Gaël Mocky is both the most likable and the funniest, and of course, Lucas Chardon is by far the most mysterious.
In terms of suspense, Thilliez does a clean and devilishly effective job. The atmosphere in a snowy setting and the all-enclosed nature of a former psychiatric hospital weigh down the atmosphere, leaving no doubt about a tragic outcome. Even if, inevitably, one thinks of The Game by David Fincher or Stephen King’s Shining for the snow-confined aspects, Puzzle has its own identity, thanks to its author.
There’s no downtime in this immersive narrative with very intense passages where Ilan is put through the wringer, where reality and imagination continually blur, prompting the reader to wonder if all of this is real or not. The strength of the novel is consistently staying on the edge, making the reader doubt from one page to the next: reality? imagination? memory? fantasy?
Well-written and intelligent, Franck Thilliez presents a high-quality psychological novel with Puzzle.
Bonus Track:
-* Once you finish the novel, you can indulge in a little puzzle; the author has drawn one piece per chapter…
-* In the fall, Franck Thilliez organized a photo contest on his Facebook page where readers had to stage their copy of Puzzle. Some photos, particularly those of the two winners, who will have their characters in the author’s next novel, truly deserve attention and show real effort and imagination! To see the results, click here: Concours Puzzle Facebook Franck Thilliez
