Dirty War

Frivolous, Fanciful, Far-Fetched and Phoney; but Fun

Dirty War by Dominique Sylvain is one of three Lola and Ingrid novels available in English.

The French literary magazine, Lire proclaimed Dirty War the best crime novel of 2011. It is a light-hearted romp through the back streets of Paris as a pair of unlikely investigators race against the police to find a murderer.

Synopsis

Commandant Sacha Duguin of the Brigade Criminelle is called to a murder in a suburb of Paris. The victim, Florian Vidal, is a young lawyer and protégée of “Mr Africa”, a power broker in the Franco-African arms trade. Somebody had placed a tire around M. Vidal’s neck, filled it with petrol and then set light to it. To those in the know, this torturous death is “Père Lebrun’s Necklace”. It is named after a tyre manufacturer in Haiti, though the practice had originated in Africa.

The murder also attracted the attention of retired police commissaire Lola Jost. Five years earlier, one of her assistants, Toussaint Kidjo, a half French and half Congolese police officer, met an equally grisly ending at the hands of Père Lebrun. Despite her efforts, ex-commissaire Jost had been unable to find the murderer. Jost is a woman with a score to settle and enlists the help of her improbable friend, American masseuse and striptease artist Ingrid Diesel, to investigate the murder.

A rampant dash through the shady world of arms dealing and Franco-African politics follows. Jost and Duguin trade insults as they race to find the killer, with dogs, bodyguards, psychotic wives and a stripper in tow.

Review

Whilst the initial murder is a little grim, Sylvain doesn’t feel the need to turn your stomach with vivid descriptions of murder and torture. She is more interested in playing on the curious friendship of a stripper and a retired police officer and their rivalry with the police. Though she doesn’t milk the storyline for laughs, she squeezes the humour out of it.

Sylvain reveals clues, witnesses and discoveries at such an alarming rate that you must work hard to keep up. The pace is frantic, and the plot goes so far beyond improbable that you will banish disbelief as an irrelevance as you tear through the pages.

If you are looking for a French author who will challenge your thinking, choose Manotti. If you want a story, choose Vargas. If you want nightmares, try Lemaitre. However, Dominique Sylvain’s Dirty War is just the job if you want a light-hearted and frivolous diversion.

A word of warning, the book ends with a cliffhanger, and it will tempt you to buy the next, Shadows and Sun. Fortunately, it has been translated into English as well.

Excerpt

A trough of muddy water separated the changing rooms from the pools. Someone had laid a plank across it as a bridge. On the far side, the traces were still visible, but fainter. Perched up on the diving board, a technician was taking photos. His colleague was sweeping the bluish waters of the pool with a net on the end of a long pole. Two other men were checking for possible fingerprints and D.N.A. samples. Sacha wished them luck: crime scenes rarely came in such Olympic proportions.

Sacha knew that as he drew near the body he was entering a zone of horrific cruelty. He had realised this from the first telephone call: you had to be an absolute sadist to set a man on fire right next to a swimming pool, making it obvious there was no chance for him to save himself by jumping off the diving board. The victim was lying in the foetal position. He was handcuffed behind his back, and the cuffs were chained to one of the board’s supports. The poor guy had been burned alive with a flaming tyre round his neck.

“Shit, that’s original!” Ménard said, kneeling beside the corpse.

The gendarme captain exchanged looks with Duguin. If he was suggesting that a good kick up the backside was in order, he wasn’t wrong. But Sacha overlooked this typical outburst from the lieutenant and approached the body himself.

Dirty War by Dominique Sylvain