The Passion According to Martial Montaurian, Jeanne Champion

It was on a September day in 1956, in a building near Place Maubert, that Mrs. Limoges, the concierge, assisted by her daughter Etiennette, discovered the body of Martial Montaurian, an inspector with the vice squad, inexplicably dead in his small room on the sixth floor. Around this mysterious death, Jeanne Champion's novel unfolds as a captivating tangle of monologues, confessions, and memories, gradually reconstructing Martial's world. From these powerful, abundant pages, driven by an exceptionally dense spirit and imagination, emerge Thomas Montaurian, the deceased's brother, known in the police as "the Bogart of the Criminal Investigation Department," the imposing Armande and Roger Le Quellec, her husband, the enigmatic Klaus Handke, and the boxer Ange Arménie, whose six-round fight against the Black Joe King Black provides a constant counterpoint of agonizing suspense throughout the book. Blending present and past, the unconscious and the familiar, humor and tragedy with diabolical certainty, Jeanne Champion succeeds in creating an atmosphere of visionary intensity, masterfully supported by the great themes of love and abandonment. The novelist clearly takes another step in deepening her talent, where the ardor to understand communicates itself to the writing, in a superb tremor that is simultaneously her style, her music, and her voice."