First, it must be said that this is the English translation of a French novel – something I would not normally have bought, but I sort of found out too late. I ma certainly not good enough for the French original, but since that is not an option, a German version would obviously have done better.

The author of this novel is known for detectives, and: it shows. The image of the private eye sitting at his desk, an empty bottle of wine in front of him, the ashes in the fireplace still hot, the revolver pressed to his head an he ready to pull the trigger... this is so clichée crime novel that one must wonder whether it is meant seriously. Apparently it is, at least the rest of the novel is not much different when it comes to style and language.

A more pleasant surprise is the plot: Crédule Grand-Duc is private investigator and payed for 18 years to find out the identity of a baby that was the sole survivor of a plane crash in which, amongst others, another baby and both babie’s parents were killed. Before preparing to kill himself at the end of the 18 years he writes down all the clues he followed and which lead to no result and leaves this notebook to Lylie, the survivor of the crash who is now 18 years old. We follow her boyfriend Marc as he reads these notes while Lylie has disappeared on a quest of her own. Other people disappear or cause trouble, and so we really follow two separate, but closely linked plots: On the one hand Grand-Duc's investigations into Lylie's identities in the past, on the other hand Marc's actions trying to make sense of Grand-Duc's annotations, finding additional information and trying to find out who are his enemies and who his friends.

It takes some time, but eventually the reader is drawn into the story. Some obvious weaknesses like the very late entrance of DNA-tests are easily forgiven, and finally the reader is rewarded with a very out-of-the-box solution.

Although people are killed and murderers are unmasked, the plot is not that of a typical detective novel. But language and construction and especially the precedence of plot construction over language and character development are typical of a detective. So: If you like crime fiction you should have a look at After the Crash by Michel Bussi.