Reissued last February by Fleuve Éditions, Les naufragés hurleurs is the second novel by Christian Carayon, the continuation of Martial de la Boissière’s adventures, which began with Le diable sur les épaules. Nice Premium invites you to discover this intimate thriller battered by the storm.
Martial de la Boissière is a survivor of the First World War; he lives on the fringes of society, almost reclusive. He only emerges to attend meetings of the Cercle Cardan, a sort of association that exposes mediums, clairvoyants, and other charlatans that flourish all over Europe at that time.
It is on this occasion that he reconnects with Alain, a childhood friend. A fashionable medium warns Alain of imminent danger, advising him to flee!
Shortly afterward, Alain is found dead in a sailing accident off the coast of Bréhat Island, in Brittany. Martial, knowing his friend’s skills as a sailor, cannot believe this death and decides to visit the site to investigate.
After the southwest, Christian Carayon takes us to Brittany in 1925, a year some predicted would be the last before the apocalypse… Indeed, with a sense of the world’s end, complete with climate disruptions, Martial heads to Bréhat and steps into a nest of vipers. Alain was not alone on the yacht that went down; he was sailing with his mother-in-law, the wife of a wealthy and paranoid notary, Baptiste Lestage. They live in an isolated, secluded manor on Bréhat Island. The Lestage family appears perfect from the outside, but their secrets are many…
In a dramatic climate setting – wind, rain, snow, storm – Christian Carayon’s hero will investigate to understand what happened to his friend. Utilizing the elements and the wild, jagged landscape of Bréhat Island, the author conveys a heavy atmosphere of secrets and double play.
With fascination, we witness Martial entering this family, a real sticky and tenacious spider web. Christian Carayon has an unmatched knack for describing the setting and atmosphere of a time period; his qualities as an author are undeniable, and the atmosphere significantly contributes to this skillfully woven family intrigue.
The author leads the reader to an intense epilogue in the form of a closed-door scenario – all characters are trapped in the manor due to a terrible storm – which will inevitably remind readers of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None.
