As every year, Franck Thilliez returns with a new thriller, and 2020, despite its uniqueness, is no exception. His novel “Twice Upon a Time,” released in early June, will have the merit of keeping you awake for a few nights until you reach the conclusion!
Julie is seventeen when she disappears in 2008. Her hometown of Savoie, Sagas, is shaken. Gabriel Moscato, Julie’s father and a gendarmerie lieutenant, investigates desperately. He follows a lead that takes him to the Hôtel de la Falaise, where he hides away in room 29 on the second floor. Overcome with exhaustion, he collapses before he can check the hotel register.
When he wakes up, under a shower of dead birds, Gabriel is in room 7 on the ground floor, and twelve years have passed…
Confused, Gabriel can’t understand anything. For him, Julie has just disappeared, and the search is in full swing. In reality, everything has changed: the case is closed, and his return to the gendarmerie receives only hostility…
This is where and how Twice Upon a Time begins, an absolutely labyrinthine thriller, once again perfectly crafted and honed by that master of intrigue, Franck Thilliez. Gabriel is a broken investigator, ready to do anything to find his daughter, even plunge into hell if necessary. And Franck Thilliez won’t spare our hero, who will reform a duo with his former best friend and partner, Paul. Paul conducts an official investigation, while Gabriel doesn’t hesitate to cross boundaries.
Completely addictive, Twice Upon a Time won’t give you a moment of peace—no respite for this tense and convoluted thriller in which we find themes dear to the author, such as memory, art pushed to its limits, and the mise en abyme already mentioned in The Unfinished Manuscript, his previous standalone novel. Which isn’t entirely a standalone, as Thilliez has more than one trick up his sleeve and has patiently woven a web between the two novels…
Skilfully executed, Twice Upon a Time is a thriller that starts with a classic plot and eventually unravels into a denser storyline as the pages turn. But what would a perfect plot be without characters that measure up?
The characters in Twice Upon a Time bring emotion and empathy to this thriller—the likes of Gabriel, of course, a man on the brink of collapse, but also Paul, Louise, Corinne… all are well-developed, finished, and meticulously crafted.
Gripping, Twice Upon a Time is a success, a captivating and intelligent thriller with an almost perfect construction that readers will find hard to put down before reaching the final pages!
