Luc Verlain
Bordeaux, France
Get to know Luc Verlain and with him the charming Aquitaine region around Bordeaux! Discover some of the most successful and enjoyed crime novels in Germany!
This is where he is meant to live? In a region where Jacques closes his boulangerie for four hours at lunchtime. Where all there is are vineyards and endless forests – instead of his beloved wide boulevards and Haussmann balconies in the Quartier Latin. Where the village tobacconist only has filterless Gitanes and not his specialty Swiss cigarettes. Here, where the phone network is weaker than anywhere in France – but who was he going to call anyway? His lovers were all in Paris. But he was here: In Aquitaine. Back home. He had wanted it. What a dumb idea that had been.
Luc Verlain loves good food, women and his carefree life in Paris. But when his father falls ill, Luc asks for a transfer. Bordeaux of all places, in the Aquitaine region that he fled from as a young policeman. Back home, Luc has to face his memories. And shortly after his arrival, a murder shocks the region: A girl lies battered to death on the beach of Lacanau-Ocan. Speculation quickly rises in the small village. The victim had just ended her relationship with an Algerian boy from the neighbourhood shortly before her death, and he is now considered a strong suspect. The girl’s stepfather wants to take matters into his own hands.
Luc’s investigations lead him to the beaches and vineyards of the region and back to Paris. Always by his side, his colleague Anouk, whose charms he finds hard to resist.
The cases in chronological order of publication:
- „Retour“
- „Chateau Mort“
- „Winter Oysters“
- „Basque Tragedy“
- „Rue de Paradis“
- „See of stars“
- „Revanche“
With this endearing, nostalgic investigator, Paris gains a new attraction … Lacroix’s best ideas come to him while walking. He loves the old Paris – the magnificent, wide
boulevards, the banks of the Seine, the brasseries and caf s. He’s a nostalgic who hates change. You won’t find a mobile phone in his coat pocket or a computer on his desk; he prefers the musty odour of old files. And, in true retro style, he even wears a hat and smokes a pipe – although he gets irritated when his Corsican colleague Paganelli teasingly calls him ‘Maigret’. Lacroix’s methods are equally old-fashioned: he puts his trust in his own intuition and psychological insight, rather than in modern technology.
For twenty years Lacroix has been in charge of the police headquarters in the beautiful Fifth Arrondissement on the Left Bank, which includes the Sorbonne and the Panthéon. The building is a monstrosity from the sixties, which also contains the outdated Police Museum. Only a handful of tourists end up there – and Lacroix. If he’s stumped by a case, it’s often in that musty museum that an inspired solution comes to him. Lacroix feels at least as much at home in his favourite bistro, Chai de l’Abbaye in Saint-Germain. That’s where each morning he meets his brother Pierre-Richard, a priest at the Basilica of Saint Clotilde, and Alain, the district’s elderly greengrocer. Whenever his investigations permit, he has lunch there and sometimes, after work, he drops into the Chai for an aperitif.
The cases in chronological order:
- Lacroix und die Toten von Pont Neuf (Lacroix and the Victims at Pont Neuf)
- Lacroix und der Bäcker von Saint-Germain (Lacroix and the Baker from Saint-Germain)
- Lacroix und die Stille Nacht von Montmartre (Lacroix and Silent Night in Montmartre)
- Lacroix und das Sommerhaus in Giverny (Lacroix and the Summerhouse in Giverny)
- Lacroix und der blinde Buchhändler von Notre Dame (Lacroix and the Blind Bookseller of Notre Dame)
- Lacroix und der traurige Weltmeister (Lacroix and the Sad World Champion)
- Lacroix und der Zug nach Reims (Lacroix and the Train to Reims)
Sofia Pericles
Young, beautiful, and a successful graduate from a prestigious university – Sofia Pericles had everything required for a brilliant career in the Interior Ministry of her home country, Cyprus. But when she returns back to the sunny island in the Mediterranean after years in the London cold, the daughter of a diplomat suddenly finds herself the victim of a political mud fight.
And she winds up a policewoman in a backwater village on the border to North Cyprus.
Although she had never before worked as a policewoman, she soon finds herself in the middle of a murder case that demands everything of her and puts her own life in danger.
But Sofia Pericles is the best police officer in Cyprus, she just doesn’t know it yet.
The cases in chronological order:
- Tod am Aphrodite-Felsen (Death at Aphrodite’s Rock)
- Der Schatz von Bellapais (The Treasure of Bellapais)
- Zypriotische Geheimnisse (Cypriot Secrets)
Zara & Zoë
Good and evil, white and black, reticent and brutal: opposites combined in two twin sisters, Zara & Zoë. Zara, who is seven minutes older, is a profiler for Europol working in the Serious Capital Crime and Terrorism Division. She sees things others don’t see. But she has to go by the rules. When she acknowledges this in her first case, she seeks out Zoë to include her in her investigations. Zoë, the younger twin – a key player in the Corsican mafia, a killer, a godmother, a smuggler, rich, smart, ruthless. But Zoë wants to get found by the sister she so despises. The two sisters grant the series a speed and a tension that is unique. It’s time for women action heroes: here they are.
The fierce heat of the south provides the framework for the exciting stories around Zara and Zoë: Marseille, Nice, the Provence, and Liguria in Italy. And in the second case, Tarifa and Melilla in Spain and northern Morocco. THe murderous hunt of the two sisters plays out in all these places. Brutal revenge, embedded in wonderful landscapes, pine forests, paradisical bays, in southern French bistros. Get caught in the excitement and enjoy the trip.
The Trilogy
- Revenge in Marseille
- Deadly Twins
- The Godfather’s Daughter