Bernard Petit, the former head of 36, quai des Orfèvres, makes his debut with “La traque,” a hard-hitting thriller. An efficient and dark style for a detective novel that oozes realism.
The armored car robbers are not new to this, and after several armed heists of armored trucks, they plan one last spectacular act before laying low: the kidnapping of a high-profile political figure to secure a massive ransom. Their leader, the charismatic Patrick Hanssen, disguises this action as a terrorist operation. He counts on the internal conflicts within various police squads to create confusion so that no one will trace their tracks. However, he did not anticipate the tenacity of the officers involved.
Divided into three major parts and alternating perspectives—omniscient narrator and internal narration by one of the robbers—”La traque” unfolds between France and Belgium, showcasing the breadth of police units that may become involved, the procedures, the services, and the complications that can arise. Contrary to what one might expect, Bernard Petit does not choose to follow a hero cop but a collection of atypical characters; he even gives a more significant role to one of the robbers, Yanis Meertens, whom we follow throughout the book. No one is favored, and the author does not present a simple duality between good cops and bad criminals.
Written without embellishments, “to the bone, no fat,” as the author told France Bleu, “La traque” reads like an assault, with all the tension, preparation, and adrenaline it generates. In a raw manner, the reader is absorbed by this realistic thriller. Inspired by his career within the French police, “La traque” contains a good share of real events and focuses on the personalities behind the characters: “What goes through the minds of those conducting a chase, what happens in the minds of those who are prey, who must act while trying to anticipate what their pursuers will do, and what they must avoid at all costs.”
For this first novel, Bernard Petit offers an effective thriller full of tension, structured like a police force’s assault, which one would follow live on a continuous news channel, in near-immersion.
