Surface by Olivier Norek

Police capitaine Noémie Chastain has everything: a coveted position in Paris, a devoted team and a loving partner. In an instant, she loses it all. On a dawn raid in a grimy Parisian banlieue, in an instant, she loses it all. Shot by the drug dealer she was about to arrest, she is left with serious scars on her face and deeper, longer-lasting damage to her psyche.

Pushed out of her job in Paris by superiors concerned that her disfigurement would damage team morale, abandoned by her boyfriend, she is posted to a police department that serves six sparsely populated communes in the back of beyond, in the southern département of Aveyron. Her brief: to report back on the police department and give head office an excuse to close it altogether.

But when the body of a child floats to the surface of the man-made lake that hides the buried past of the village of Avalone, Capitaine Chastain is forced to take the opportunity to prove her worth and win back her job in Paris. To solve the case, she must lead a team more used to tracking down stolen combine harvesters – handsome Lieutenant Valant, the mayor’s son; ex-Drug Squad Brigadier Bousquet; and green local boy “Bambi” – through the twists and turns of what has become a murder investigation and uncover the dark secrets that have haunted the village for twenty years. Translated from the French by Nick Caistor

Police capitaine Noémie Chastain has everything: a coveted position in Paris, a devoted team and a loving partner. In an instant, she loses it all. On a dawn raid in a grimy Parisian banlieue, in an instant, she loses it all. Shot by the drug dealer she was about to arrest, she is left with serious scars on her face and deeper, longer-lasting damage to her psyche.

Pushed out of her job in Paris by superiors concerned that her disfigurement would damage team morale, abandoned by her boyfriend, she is posted to a police department that serves six sparsely populated communes in the back of beyond, in the southern département of Aveyron. Her brief: to report back on the police department and give head office an excuse to close it altogether.

But when the body of a child floats to the surface of the man-made lake that hides the buried past of the village of Avalone, Capitaine Chastain is forced to take the opportunity to prove her worth and win back her job in Paris. To solve the case, she must lead a team more used to tracking down stolen combine harvesters – handsome Lieutenant Valant, the mayor’s son; ex-Drug Squad Brigadier Bousquet; and green local boy “Bambi” – through the twists and turns of what has become a murder investigation and uncover the dark secrets that have haunted the village for twenty years. Translated from the French by Nick Caistor

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