The Accident on the A35

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I have still yet to read His Bloody Project (2015), Graeme Macrae Burnet's other book, which many people have told me is marvellous. I'll be putting that right very soon. A spokesperson for Cambridgeshire Police said: "Three people have died following a three-vehicle crash near Stamford. Emergency services, including the air ambulance, are in attendance on the A35 near Axminster in east Devon. The deceased’s seventeen-year-old son, Raymond (the same name as the “author’s”), appears relieved by his father’s death. “…a certain lightness; a feeling similar to that which he experienced when the school year ended for summer, or when spring arrived and it became possible to leave the house without a winter coat.” Finally, I would like to thank the public for their patience while the road closures were in place. These were absolutely necessary to allow us to carry out a thorough examination of the scene."

Macrae Burnet gives the reader a crime novel that is much more about the characters than about the crime being solved. The players are intimately drawn, their actions closely described, the mood of the town almost palpable and the setting thoroughly evoked, while the reader is left to reach their own conclusions on several key aspects of the story. With its deft writing and well-rounded characters, this novel is an accomplished and atmospheric police procedural that frequently strays into classic noir badlands. One more thing: the metafictional nods in the introduction and epilogue work very nicely this time; I was less keen on them with the previous novel but this time they add an entirely new dimension to the reading of this book. I can't and won't say why, but all becomes very clear. A collision involving a tractor and a van took place on the westbound carriage way near Puddletown.

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This is on the face of it a crime novel, but the quality of the writing, the depth of the characterisation, the creation of place and time and the intelligence of the game the author plays with the reader all raise it so that it sits easily into the literary fiction category, in my opinion at the highest level.

A spokeswoman from Dorset & Wiltshire Fire Rescue Service said: "At 2.56pm yesterday, we were notified by the police about a road traffic collision on Puddletown Bypass. Three stars though I disliked events because this author writes compelling, unpredictable and very off-center plots.The proprietor carefully placed a bottle on a paper doily in front of him. Then he lit a cigarette himself. Usually in such a situation, the proprietor of a bar will busy himself with some menial task- polishing glasses or wiping down surfaces - so that his customer does not feel self conscious about drinking alone. Or he will feel the need to offer some banal remarks. But the proprietor of the cafe on the corner of Rue Saint-Fiacre did neither of these things. He simply stood behind the counter, watching Gorski with a placid expression.” Dorset Police are said to be at the scene and no further information has yet been provided. Traffic is being diverted via local routes. Macrae Burnet’s ventriloquism of a sub-Maigret novel set in 1970 pleasantly recreates a France of francs and call boxes. The one glaring anachronism is Gorski feeling guilt about drinking wine with his lunch, which would surely have been de rigueur for a provincial detective of that time. Neatly, in a plot already resting on old books, what people are reading – Balzac, Baudelaire, Zola and Sartre – enjoyably inflects both prose and plot. The main presiding literary spirit, Simenon, would surely have approved of a tense, strange funeral scene, and the successive expectation reversals three chapters from the end. Unflashy yet highly accomplished, The Accident on the A35 works on several levels. It’s the story of a bereaved schoolboy going off the rails and a middle-aged man whose wife has had enough – and his subsequent poignant need to return to his boyhood home to live with his widowed mother, who has dementia. It has a denouement like something out of Greek tragedy but delivers as a proper police procedural too, with further mystery when Gorski is drawn reluctantly into the unsolved case of a Strasbourg woman strangled, it turns out, in the unaccounted hours before Bertrand’s death.

Police are appealing for witnesses and would like to hear from anyone who saw either vehicle prior to the incident or witnessed the collision itself. As with Adele Budeau, we learn in the Forward (and more in the Afterword) that this detective story was actually one of two outstanding manuscripts by the “acclaimed” (fictional) author, Raymond Brunet, delivered to the publisher on the day of his mother’s death. Brunet had died years earlier in a suicide, which leaves the reader wondering why these manuscripts weren’t sent until this very day. Burnet is such a tease with his crafty meta-fiction! A spokesperson for Dorset Police said: "The road has been closed between the Symondsbury and Crown roundabouts and these closures are expected to remain in place for some time. We would advise motorists to seek alternative routes while these closures are in place. The story opens when a lawyer is killed in a road accident, the titular "accident on the A35". It appears a routine accident however Georges Gorski wonders where the lawyer was prior to the accident and this query opens a can of worms which sustains the rest of the book.This novel is situated in Saint-Louis in France. It is is structured in two parts. The first part is the plot about how the death of Bertrand Barthelme during a car crash affects the lives of the two main protagonists. The first protagonist is Georges Gorski, a senior officer in the St Louis police force who is investigating the crash. The second is Raymond Barthelme, the son of Bertrand Barthelme. Thanks to #SkyhorsePublishing, NetGalley, and the terrific Graeme Macrae Burnet for the opportunity to read the ARC. Police and ambulance are at the scene of a two-car collision on the A35 at Offwell, Honiton, police have now confirmed. I’m afraid I struggled with The Accident on the A35 by Graeme Macrae Burnet. It could well have to do with the translation, but as well as being unable to get close to the characters, I couldn’t raise any enthusiasm for the plot. When Bertrand Barthelme runs his car off the A35 into a tree one evening and dies, Inspector Georges Gorski has no reason to think it was anything other than an unfortunate accident. But Barthelme's widow thinks there's something odd about her husband having been at that spot at that time and asks Gorski to look into it a bit more. Mme Barthelme is an attractive 40-something with more than a touch of the femme fatale in this first meeting, so Gorski finds himself agreeing. Meantime, Barthelme's 17-year-old son Raymond starts a kind of investigation of his own, in an attempt to learn more about the father with whom he had always had a rather cold, distant relationship. Both investigations will head off in unexpected directions.