The story opens when a lawyer is killed in a road accident, the titular "accident on the A35". It appears a routine accident however Georges Gorski wonders where the lawyer was prior to the accident and this query opens a can of worms which sustains the rest of the book. As with Adele Budeau, we learn in the Forward (and more in the Afterword) that this detective story was actually one of two outstanding manuscripts by the “acclaimed” (fictional) author, Raymond Brunet, delivered to the publisher on the day of his mother’s death. Brunet had died years earlier in a suicide, which leaves the reader wondering why these manuscripts weren’t sent until this very day. Burnet is such a tease with his crafty meta-fiction!

applause. serious applause. If my reading year continues to maintain this quality, I'll be a very happy reader person. Don't expect your average, run-of-the-mill detective/mystery story here -- this book is something that transcends the mundane and the ordinary. It's so refreshing these days to find an author who rises well out of the mainstream and moves his work into literary territory, and that is precisely why I'm so drawn to his work. It's also why I'll keep buying and reading Burnet's books as long as he continues to write them. If you want an average crime drama, well, this is definitely not that. The conceit that the novel wasn’t actually written by Macrae Burnet pays off less happily in stretches of prose that it’s hard to believe really were composed by a Man Booker prize-shortlisted author. The formulations “greatly concern” and “greatly concerned” turn up in adjoining sentences, the adjective “little” is employed twice within three lines, and “resulting” and “result” inside 10 words. Postmodernism may mean never having to say you’re sloppy, but it takes great charity to see these repetitions as a gag about the dodgy quality of English translations from foreign novels.

LEGAL NOTICE

Graeme Macrae Burnet has written a book purported to be a translation of a manuscript (one of two) sent to a publisher by fictional writer, Raymond Burnet after he committed suicide. The novel is a literary mystery in the classic French style of Georges Simenon, creator of fictional French detective Jules Maigret. Although, I haven't read any of Simenon's books I have seen the TV series Maigret based on the books and can see that the this novel captures the shadowy detective and the dark, smoky scenes in cafes and nightclubs of Maigret's world. The front and endpapers claim that The Accident on the A35 turned up in a bundle with another unpublished Brunet manuscript. The Scottish middleman will presumably translate and annotate the third work in due course. As Macrae Burnet is careful not to specify the genre of this final text, it may turn out to be a departure – a Brunet memoir or biography of Simenon, perhaps even a guidebook to Saint-Louis – that would, presumably, further compromise the reliability of The Disappearance of Adèle Bedeau and The Accident on the A35. In conclusion I was impressed by Graeme Macrea Burnet's skills as a writer and reading this novel has reinforced the high opinion I formed of him when reading His Bloody Project; he has intrigued and inspired me to read The Disappearance of Adele Bedeau. Reading The Disappearance of Adèle Bedeau convinced me that Burnet was channeling Simenon; while carrying on in that vein in The Accident on the A35, he now brings in some of the existentialist flavor of Sartre with a side of Camus. The alienation, the desire for freedom, the internal darkness is all there, running throughout the entire novel. Burnet has really done an especially great job with the character of Raymond, who exemplifies the existential angst of doing and feeling what he wants to as opposed to conforming to social expectations; the same is true in the case of the elder Gorski, with the added problems of a failing home life and career which is anything but satisfying. Add into the mix that these dramas play out within the confines of the claustrophobic French town of Saint-Louis, and what may have started as a detective story turns into much more of an examination deep into the realm of the human psyche. And it's not pretty, trust me.

Four other people - including an eight-year-old girl who suffered serious injuries - were taken to hospital following the crash on the A35 yesterday (January 16). I’m afraid I struggled with The Accident on the A35 by Graeme Macrae Burnet. It could well have to do with the translation, but as well as being unable to get close to the characters, I couldn’t raise any enthusiasm for the plot. One more thing: the metafictional nods in the introduction and epilogue work very nicely this time; I was less keen on them with the previous novel but this time they add an entirely new dimension to the reading of this book. I can't and won't say why, but all becomes very clear. The Accident on the A35 is the second book in the Georges Gorski series by award-winning Scottish author, Graeme Macrae Burnet. It looked pretty straightforward: Bertrand Bethelme’s Mercedes had run off the A35 into a tree, sometime after 9pm on Tuesday night. He probably fell asleep at the wheel. But after confirming his identity the following morning, his widow, Lucette raised a query: where had her husband been that night? His usual Tuesday night dinner with his club would not put him anywhere near the A35. The narrative is told from two perspectives, that of Detective Gorski and that of Raymond, the teenaged son of the deceased. Gorski is still in the town of St, Louis, a small city in France where "the inhabitants are most comfortable with failure. Success serves only to remind the citizenry of their own shortcomings and is thus enthusiastically resented". Gorski's wife has left him and he spends his time drinking heavily at Le Pot. While he misses his wife, he enjoys solitude and the ability to do as he wishes when he wishes.

The narration has the simple momentum of classic crime writing, heavy on lit cigarettes, light on subordinate clauses. Irresponsibly drawn to Lucette – he knows he’s a fool – Gorski digs for dirt on Bertrand, who at the time of his death was not (as his wife believed) returning from a traditional midweek supper with colleagues. That was Bertrand’s cover story – but for what? Why did he secretly withdraw a large wad of cash every Tuesday morning? And isn’t it odd that the damage to his Mercedes doesn’t seem consistent with hitting a tree? Over the past year I’ve become an aficionado of Grame Macrae Burnet after becoming entranced with his Booker-nominated novel, His Bloody Project. That was followed by reading The Disappearance of Adele Bedeau, and now I’ve dipped into the well for the third time with his thoroughly absorbing The Accident on A35. All the other characters we meet along the way are just as well-drawn, building up a complete picture of the two neighbouring societies at the heart of the story. Despite the relative brevity of the book, the secondary characters are allowed to develop over time, making them feel rounded and true. Short sketches of people who appear only for moments in a café or on the street all add to the understanding of the culture, which in turn adds to our understanding of how it has formed and shaped our main characters, Raymond and Gorski. Not a word is wasted – with the briefest of descriptions, Burnet can create a person who feels real, solid, entire, as if they might be a neighbour we've known all our life. And that's all I'll say for the story itself: it would be shame to give too much away. A couple weeks ago I wrote of Pierre Lemaitre's Three Days and a Life that it reminded me of Simenon and Highsmith, only to wonder this week at my narrow range of reference – because this book really reminded me of Simenon, almost to the point of parody. Now I suspect that was exactly the point. Faux-Maigret.

This novel – like Adele Bedeau – reintroduces the reader to Georges Gorski, the police chief of an Alsace town who has married above his station…and is now estranged from his wife. When a wealthy solicitor named Bertrand Barhelme suffers a fatal car crash, Georges Gorski must deliver the news to his youngish widow, Lucette, and their teenage son Raymond.Accident on the A35 is a literary mystery. Not like other crime mysteries that are plot-driven with many twists and turns. It’s important to step into this novel realizing you are about to read an easy flowing mystery that is character-driven. Readers who are looking for an explosive “whodunit” plot twist will not find it here. Rather, The Accident on A35 carefully crafts a story of a man who is living a hidden life and who may or may not have been a victim of foul play. would be keen to hear from any motorists who may have captured the incident, or the events leading up to it, on dashcam footage. Macrae Burnet writes a literary mystery, paying homage to Sartre and Georges Simenon in this distinctly French style novel, set primarily in the non descript and insipid small town of Saint-Louis. An author commits suicide, paving the path to the publication of a novel deemed to be autobiographical, although how much is truth or false is up for debate, but it does feel real. George Gorski, Chief of Police in the town is, by his own estimation, a provincial plodder, separated from his wife, Celine, and missing his daughter. He wanders around the town's bars, cafes and restaurants, drinking whilst trying to avoid being perceived as a drinker. A fatal car accident on the A35 kills respectable lawyer, Bernard Barthelme, a man not much mourned by those close to him or those who knew him. Lucette, the widow, asks him to look into the death because her husband by all rights should not have been on that road. Feeling drawn to Lucette, and with nothing better to do, Gorski begins to look into the mystery. This is a slow building character driven story, not a plot driven crime story with tension and suspense.

While any follow up is unnecessary, as Chief Inspector, Gorski decides he will make some enquiries for the attractive young widow. And the inconsistencies he uncovers, coupled with a puzzling reticence displayed by the dead man’s colleagues and friends soon has Gorski intrigued, and determined to find out just what’s been going on. Meanwhile, Raymond Bethelme, the accident victim’s 17-year-old son, is conducting a sort of enquiry of his own, based on a scrap of paper found in his father’s desk drawer.

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His Bloody Project was presented as a collection of documents unearthed by Burnet as he traced his family tree. This time he’s the translator of a French writer named Raymond Brunet, who after publishing The Disappearance of Adèle Bedeau killed himself in 1992. Two decades later, on the death of his mother, lawyers acting for Raymond (mark the name) sent his publisher a parcel containing the manuscript of L’Accident sur l’A35. Once again, Graeme Macrae Burnet comes up with a clever conceit based around the discovery of a decades-old manuscript in the slush pile of a Parisian publishing house. The story in this book is Macrae Burnet’s ‘translation’ and is every bit as brilliant a concept as the Booker-nominated His Bloody Project. Indeed, all the better, in my view, for being a far more subtle take on subterfuge. Here, the author succeeds in authentically replicating the slightly formal, ever so slightly stilted language of a French-to-English translation. This is handled in such a convincing manner that it becomes a totally credible construct and to me it is the very finest thing about this very fine literary crime novel. This is on the face of it a crime novel, but the quality of the writing, the depth of the characterisation, the creation of place and time and the intelligence of the game the author plays with the reader all raise it so that it sits easily into the literary fiction category, in my opinion at the highest level. Not a word of criticism in this review because I can find nothing to criticise. I loved every lean and beautifully placed word of this slim book, and was wholly absorbed from beginning to end. It deserves and gets my highest recommendation – superb! Once again Graeme Macrae Burnet adds a foreword and afterword which explain how the story is a rediscovered lost manuscript by the book's actual author, Raymond Brunet (who also wrote The Disappearance of Adèle Bedeau). It all adds another layer of playfulness to a very satisfying read.