Andrée A. Michaud keeps us powerfully in suspense with Preies, where the hunt for innocents and that of a culprit mingle.
Here is a must-have novel for the coming summer. However, you should not read Preies while camping wild or in the heart of a forest. Nor in an isolated chalet. Nor on a gloomy windy evening.
But neither can you read it when you only have a few minutes at your disposal, because once opened, leaving it aside is a feat! The only way to catch your breath is to surrender all at once.
Andrée A. Michaud is therefore repeating to us the masterstroke which earned her previous thrillers to be awarded prizes: Mirror Lake, Tempêtes, Buzzard… There are moreover allusions to this one in Preies and a similar way to warn us in advance that it will end badly. Very bad.
Nevertheless, and this is the great talent of the author, even the announced conclusion does not prevent the suspense: suddenly fate would thwart the novelist! Because stalking three 16-year-olds in the woods is so horrible…
Jude, Abe, and Alex had simply gone camping by the Brûlée River, “a place that inspired confidence and where you did not imagine that evil could invite itself”. Parents are still a bit worried – will their youngsters be able to manage? But we have to come back, don’t we, to play mother hen?
Except that there are intuitions that do not deceive, especially when the evil bears the name of a local guy, a connoisseur of the woods, devoid of empathy and well endowed with cruelty. It is never good to cross paths with Gerry Nantel, even less when he is holding a rifle. How do you escape such a fanatic when he’s chasing you?
All the fears gathered
Far from the anxieties of the trio, the locality of Rivière-Brûlée is preparing for its annual summer party. Until Jude’s father appears, distraught. He was supposed to pick up the three friends once their few days of camping were over, but he found the camp abandoned…and worse.
What happened ? Parents, police, locals will want to know, and those who know Gerry will wonder if by any chance he might have something to do with these disappearances… But what is suspicion worth?
We thus pass through all the fears: of dying, of not finding, of knowing too much or not enough. Each character has their own and we feel them deeply, as if we ourselves were trying to hide behind an embankment or hoping for the return of a son beyond all reason.
Andrée A. Michaud knows how to describe the moods and traps of nature so well that the atmospheres she creates make you shudder or break your heart. We come out shaken. So delighted!
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