The Moment Before Drowning

On Dec. 12, 1959, Capt. Jacques le Garrec, the narrator of British author Brydon’s provocative and unsettling first novel, returns in disgrace to his hometown of Sainte-Élisabeth in Brittany. He’s accused of committing a terrible crime in Algeria, where he has spent the last two years in the French army intelligence services interrogating Algerian insurgents. While le Garrec, a former police detective and WWII Resistance fighter, awaits trial, an old acquaintance asks him to look into the murder of Anne-Lise Aurigny, a brilliant high school student whose mutilated body was found outside Sainte-Élisabeth in a field of heather the previous winter. Le Garrec soon learns that Anne Lise’s father was a German officer and her mother was brutalized after the war as a supposed Nazi sympathizer. As le Garrec investigates further, he’s troubled by the memories of the atrocities he witnessed in Algeria and of the 19-year-old Algerian girl he was powerless to save. This is a remarkably assured debut by a gifted new writer. [em]Agent: Bill Goodall, A for Authors (U.K.). (July) [/em]