Alex

by Pierre Lemaitre

Overview

Mentre cammina per le strade di Parigi, Alex viene seguita da uno sconosciuto che, dopo averla aggredita e picchiata selvaggiamente, la carica su un anonimo furgone bianco facendo perdere le sue tracce. Un testimone ha assistito al rapimento e grazie alla sua segnalazione il comandante di polizia Camille Verhoeven inizia a indagare sulla vicenda...

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9788852021046
Publisher:	MONDADORI
Publication date:	10/25/2011
Sold by:	ARNOLDO MONDADORI - EBKS
Format:	eBook
File size:	541 KB
Language:	Italian

About the Author

Pierre Lemaitre nació en París en 1951. Antes de ganar el Premio Goncourt 2013 con Nos vemos allá arriba, ya era un escritor de renombre en el género de la novela policiaca. Con Irène (Alfaguara 2015, Premio a la Primera Novela Policiaca del Festival de Cognac, Premio San Clemente, considerada Mejor Novela Negra del Año por El Periódico de Catalunya) inició la serie protagonizada por el comandante Camille Verhoeven, que incluye Alex (Alfaguara 2015, Dagger Award 2013, Premio de Lectores de Novela Negra de Livre de Poche 2012 y uno de los libros del año según el Financial Times, en curso de adaptación al cine), Rosy & John (Alfaguara 2016) y Camille (Alfaguara 2016, Dagger Award 2015). Fuera de la serie llegaron, con una extraordinaria recepción por parte del público y de la crítica, Vestido de novia (Alfaguara 2014, Premio del Salon du Polar 2009 y Premio Best Novel Valencia Negra, en curso de adaptación al cine), Recursos inhumanos (Alfaguara 2017, Premio de Novela Negra Europea, en curso de adaptación como serie de televisión) y Tres días y una vida (2016). Además del Goncourt y de tres Dagger Awards, ha obtenido el Premio a la Mejor Novela Francesa 2013 de la revista Lire, el Premio Roman France Télévisions y el Premio de los Libreros de Nancy-Le Point, y su obra, con más de tres millones de lectores, está siendo traducida a treinta idiomas.

Read an Excerpt

Her life is a series of frozen images, a spool of film that has snapped in the projector—it is impossible for her to rewind, to refashion her story, to find new words. The next time she has dinner here, she might stay a little later, and he might be waiting for her outside when she leaves—who knows? Alex knows. Alex knows all too well how these things go. It’s always the same story. Her fleeting encounters with men never become love stories; this is a part of the film she’s seen many times, a part she remembers. That’s just the way it is.

It is completely dark now and the night is warm. A bus has just pulled up. She quickens her step, the driver sees her in the rearview mirror and waits. She runs for the bus but, just as she’s about to get on, changes her mind, decides to walk a little way. She signals to the driver, who gives a regretful shrug, as if to say Oh well, such is life. He opens the bus door anyway.

“There won’t be another bus after me. I’m the last one tonight . . .”

Alex smiles, thanks him with a wave. It doesn’t matter. She’ll walk the rest of the way. She’ll take the rue Falguière and then the rue Labrouste.

She’s been living near the Porte de Vanves for three months now. She moves around a lot. Before this, she lived near Porte de Clignancourt and before that on the rue du Commerce. Most people hate moving, but for Alex it’s a need. She loves it. Maybe because, as with the wigs, it feels like she’s changing her life. It’s a recurring theme. One day she’ll change her life.

A little way in front of her, a white van pulls onto the pavement to park. To get past, Alex has to squeeze between the van and the building. She senses a presence, a man; she has no time to turn. A fist slams between her shoulder blades, leaving her breathless. She loses her balance, topples forward, her forehead banging violently against the van with a dull clang; she drops everything she’s carrying, her hands flailing desperately to find something to catch hold of—they find nothing.

Reading Group Guide

With hairpin plot twists, characters deep enough to confound a psychoanalyst, and an intense yet tasteful dose of heart-stopping violence, Alex by Pierre Lemaitre is an unforgettable experience that leaves readers with as many tantalizing questions as satisfying answers.
 
1. What are some of the narrative and descriptive techniques Pierre Lemaitre uses to create effective plot twists?
 
2. Does Commandant Verhoeven’s torment over the kidnapping and murder of his wife help or hinder his abilities to solve the case at the center of the novel? Does it seem that he believes he can find some measure of closure over Irene’s murder if he can solve this case?
 
3. At the end of the novel, do you believe the conclusion Verhoeven has reached about Alex’s motivations is accurate? Is Vasseur guilty? (If so, of what?) What might Verhoeven have—intentionally or not—overlooked?
 
4. After finishing, review the first chapter describing Alex’s “normal” day-to-day existence.
 
5. What clues does Lemaitre provide here that hint at what lies below the surface?
 
6. Is Alex a sympathetic character? Which of her actions can you justify or even relate to, and which do you find objectively repulsive?
 
7. Do you think Alex’s fear and acceptance of death is genuine when she is in captivity, or does it seem as though she is seeing several moves ahead, like a calculating chessmaster?
 
8. What is the significance to the novel of Maud Verhoeven, Commandant Verhoeven’s late mother who was a renowned painter? How does her “ghost”—as represented in her paintings and his memories—affect how he goes about his life and work?
 
9. Discuss the scene with Alex and Bobby, the devoutly religious truck driver. What do we learn about Alex’s attitudes towards God, spirituality and the afterlife? How do these attitudes manifest in her actions throughout the novel?

Editorial Reviews

At the outset of French author Lemaitre’s impressive American debut, the first in a trilogy, attractive 30-year-old Alex Prévost is shopping for wigs in a Paris shop when she spots a man waiting on the street who’s clearly been following her. Perhaps he’s just an admirer who wants to meet her, she thinks. That night, after dining alone at a restaurant, Alex is accosted on the sidewalk by a man who, after discarding the wig he initially grabbed and seizing her by her real hair, throws her into a white van. Soon Alex finds herself trapped inside a wooden crate suspended from the ceiling of an abandoned warehouse. Meanwhile, Commandant Camille Verhoeven throws himself into the kidnapping investigation as a way to deal with his grief over his wife’s death, but he and his detectives have few clues to aid them in identifying Alex’s abductor. An irritant to his superiors but respected by his subordinates, Verhoeven uses his diminutive stature to unsettle witnesses and suspects while surprising them with his intelligence and wit. Some unexpected plot twists will keep readers turning the pages. 150,000-copy first printing. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

"Before you can say Gone Girl, he discovers the crime is far from random and Alex anything but an ordinary victim. This gritty page-turner, Alex, is the first in a promised trilogy.Plus, s'il vous plaît. A-"-Thom Geier, Entertainment Weekly

“An auspicious English-language debut . . . With quiet virtuosity, Lemaitre moves the narrative through its various levels toward a concluding act of retribution that is both ingeniously conceived and immensely satisfying. Tricky, disturbing and ultimately affecting, Alex is a welcome addition to the rising tide of European crime fiction that has followed in the wake of Stieg Larsson’s death. Larsson’s many readers should take this book to their hearts and should find themselves waiting, with some degree of impatience, for the next Verhoeven novel to appear.”— Bill Sheehan, The Washington Post Book World

“An original and absorbing ability to leash incredulity in the name of the fictional contract between author and reader . . . A police procedural, a thriller against time, a race between hunted and hunter, and a whydunnit, written from multiple points of view that explore several apparently parallel stories which finally meet.”—CWA International Dagger Award Judges citation

"Genuinely unpredictable in a way few suspense novels are." —Charles Finch, USA Today

"Lemaitre’s plot is laid out with mathematical precision: a beautiful woman is kidnapped, stripped naked, thrown into a cage and subjected to the systematic torture of a brutal captor . . . Revenge narratives go all the way back to the Greeks, but it’s the vagina dentate component that sets a specimen like Alex apart, as Lemaitre adapts Larsson’s blueprint with moves of his own." —Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review

“Lemaitre’s impressive American debut . . . unexpected plot twists will keep readers turning the pages.”—Publishers Weekly (starred and boxed review)

"An eloquent thriller with a denouement that raises eyebrows as it speeds the pulse." —Kirkus Reviews (starred)

“Fascinating . . . filled with many twists and turns of plot along with a huge surprise.”—Connie Fletcher, Booklist
 
“Will keep you turning pages until well past your bedtime—with all the lights on, of course.”—Library Journal

“What begins as a search for a missing person soon becomes a beguiling series of investigations linked only by Alex, a Parisian version of Lisbeth Salander. Camille, volatile, brilliant and just under 5ft, is an equally riveting figure.”—John Dugdale, The Sunday Times

“Hypnotic . . . [a] remarkably determined and dangerous young woman—a woman who admittedly makes Lisbeth Salander look like Mary Poppins.”—Raven Crime Reads
 
“The winner of countless French crime-writing prizes, Lemaître is far too canny to join the ranks of thriller authors who merely revel in disturbing details and gory crimes. Where another novel would have finished, Alex is just beginning, and the book moves from read-as-fast-as-you-can horror to an intricately plotted race to a dark truth … There's humour here, and characters to return to, but really Alex is about thrills. And as the novel barrels triumphantly towards its unexpected but satisfying conclusion, it's in this respect that it deliver.”—Alison Flood, The Observer
 
“Relentlessly gripping . . . Various subtle variations of the crime novel are handled with aplomb . . . By page 200 you may believe that you're moving to a pulse-raising conclusion. But you will be wrong; in some senses, the novel has only just begun.”—Barry Forshaw, The Independent
 
“[With] a spectacular plot twist and the tension, along with the body count, mounts ever higher – an invigoratingly scary, one-sitting read.”—Laura Wilson, The Guardian
 
“What sets this work apart from the current crop of crime fiction is how utterly it confounds our expectations and challenges our moral certainties . . . [Alex is] book that will make you think, and one that any game reader will not easily forget.”—Christine Cremen, The Age (Melbourne)
 
“Fascinating, horrifying, not to be missed.”—Rolling Stone (Italy)
 
“Both a psychological thriller and a police procedural, it enthralls at every stage of its unpredictability . . . Grippingly original.”— Marcel Berlins, The Times
 
“A weaver of dark and disturbing crime fiction . . . Lemaître brings his stinging, bitter story to a genuinely unexpected conclusion. We are not in the comfortable world of Inspector Maigret here—this is harsh, fierce crime writing with a Gauloise tinge. It would not be out of place filmed in black-and-white by the late, lamented Francois Truffaut, who loved crime tales like this. ”—Geoffrey Wansell, The Daily Mail
 
“An off-beat and slightly surreal Parisian mystery . . . A warmly recommended read.”—Jessica Mann, Literary Review
 
“Lemaître has achieved a milestone with his new novel: half mystery, half thriller, 100 percent successful.”—Jean-Christophe Buisson, Le Figaro
 
“Divided into three distinct acts [Alex] offers an intriguing structure … Lemaitre is not only providing a fascinating variation of the traditional crime narrative but also a commentary on the genre itself. Hailed as the most important crime novel in translation since Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Alex similarly features as an intriguingly flawed feminist heroine bent on vengeance, and will likely prove a sensation of the crime fiction year.”—Declan Burke, The Irish Times
 
“Exhilarating, literary, Hitchcockian  . . . This new investigation of Commandant Camille Verhoeven resumes with the sense of suspense, the art of the unexpected twist, the play on emotions that so seduced us.”—Le Monde
 
“I was struck by Pierre Lemaitre’s short, sharp, staccato voice, right from the off. And it makes a gritty, hard-to-read-in-a-good-way tome that much more relentless . . . Paris is a dark, scary, borderline disgusting place, and like the rest of the characters in the book, is not blessed with any romantic flourishes. This is down and dirty, and not for the faint of heart . . . Lemaitre keeps it real, and really keeps it going: it is, I imagine, what it’s like to be in a car chase, in the movies. Kudos as well to the translator, Frank Wynne, who keeps the Gallic tone while perfectly infusing it with English idioms.”—Sue Conley, The Evening Herald (Dublin)
 
“The torture scenes are enough to make you squirm, with translator Frank Wynne retaining the natural flow of the French language while conveying the horrifying chapters with rats with frightening realism.”—The Herald Sun (Australia)

“Forget Scandi Noir: French noir is where it’s at. With torture scenes that make American Psycho read like Dear Zoo, it even has a Gone Girl-esque twist.”—Shortlist magazine

A top 10 Amazon best books pick, September 2013

"Every so often a crime thriller comes along that leaves you breathless . . . Alex is one such book and you are guaranteed a tale of the unexpected from start to finish. With its mesmerising female protagonist, and unique detective this is an absolute gem of a crime novel that is wonderfully dark, scary, mad, bad and dangerous to know, but just far too good to miss…"—Raven Crime Reads, Top 5 Crime Reads of 2013

 

From the Publisher