The Accident on the A35

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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." Neither Barthelme’s widow Lucette – younger than Gorski expects – nor his 16-year-old son Raymond seem moved by the news, which Gorski delivers in person on account of the man’s social standing. Lucette even seems to be flirting, discussing her sleeping arrangements – Gorski’s eyes straying here, his wife having walked out on him with their teenage daughter. 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.” 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.

The Accident on the A35: An Inspector Gorski Investigation” by Graeme Macrae Burnet deservedly earned accolades as a Guardian Best Crime and Thriller Book for 2017, and was long-listed for the Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year award for 2018. This highly compelling historical thriller — one of my fave genres — is beautifully described in the Publisher’s Note, which I’ll share here while awarding it 5/5! I really enjoyed The Disappearance of Adèle Bedeau (2014) and so was keen to read this 2017 follow up.There’s something a bit Wes Anderson about Graeme Macrae Burnet. There’s a dry humour to his characters. It’s hard not to love. He skilfully portrays absurdity and contradictions of characters that have a very strong sense of self. The metafiction element of this book turns it into a work of art, and opens up a discussion about fiction and literature in general, and the way it may or may not be intertwined with the lives of the writers who wrote it. After reading this you may question other books, and which parts of them are real or fiction. It’s very poetic. Macrae Burnet becomes a character himself, that comments on and critiques the work, which to some extent, absolves him of the responsibility for any of it’s flaws. He says exactly what you are thinking at the end of the book. If it was overused it would be a cop-out, but it isn’t (to me at least, in fact I think it’s the first time I’ve seen this), so it feels very original. We’ll leave it at that before we spoil it for anyone. But it is a very interesting device which is beginning to characterise and define Macrae Burnet’s work. An investigation is underway into this collision and I am appealing to anyone who witnessed what happened to please come forward.

This is a subtle book about a man living a hidden life and what transpires after his death. The reader must not mind that a crime isn’t solved or is it that there was no crime at all? The narrative is told from two perspectives, that of Detective Gorski and that of Raymond, the teenaged son of the deceased. Gorski is still in the town of St, Louis, a small city in France where "the inhabitants are most comfortable with failure. Success serves only to remind the citizenry of their own shortcomings and is thus enthusiastically resented". Gorski's wife has left him and he spends his time drinking heavily at Le Pot. While he misses his wife, he enjoys solitude and the ability to do as he wishes when he wishes. What bugs me is I can’t find his two other books in my library. That bugs me when 1) I can’t remember if I gave books away (and as best my feeble brain can recall I did not), and 2) if I did not give them away where in the hell are they? 😟The Accident on the A35 is a darkly humorous, subtle, and sophisticated novel that burrows into the psyches of its characters and explores the dark corners of life in a sleepy town.” This novel – like Adele Bedeau – reintroduces the reader to Georges Gorski, the police chief of an Alsace town who has married above his station…and is now estranged from his wife. When a wealthy solicitor named Bertrand Barhelme suffers a fatal car crash, Georges Gorski must deliver the news to his youngish widow, Lucette, and their teenage son Raymond.

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. Both protagonists, on a similar quest - to find answers about Barthelme's life - spend a lot of time getting soused. They approach things from odd angles, making this book funny, sad, and even silly at times. According to the afterward, written by the translator, Graeme Macrae Burnet, much of the narrative is a reflection of the author's own life. However, while much of the book may have had a basis in reality, it strikes me as a definite work of fiction. As Sartre said, a novel is "neither true nor false". 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. The driver of the Land Rover - a woman in her 50s from the Tooting area of London - was taken to Dorchester Hospital. Police say her injuries are not believed to be life-threatening.The crash happened at Fern Lane, Wilmington, near Honiton, at around 2.30pm. Devon and Cornwall Police says it involved a white BMW 318 and blue Land Rover Discovery Sport. In conclusion I was impressed by Graeme Macrea Burnet's skills as a writer and reading this novel has reinforced the high opinion I formed of him when reading His Bloody Project; he has intrigued and inspired me to read The Disappearance of Adele Bedeau.

Over the past year I’ve become an aficionado of Grame Macrae Burnet after becoming entranced with his Booker-nominated novel, His Bloody Project. That was followed by reading The Disappearance of Adele Bedeau, and now I’ve dipped into the well for the third time with his thoroughly absorbing The Accident on A35. Not a word of criticism in this review because I can find nothing to criticise. I loved every lean and beautifully placed word of this slim book, and was wholly absorbed from beginning to end. It deserves and gets my highest recommendation – superb!I was introduced to Scottish author, Graeme Macrae Burnet, with His Blood Project, shortlisted for the Booker prize in 2016. A brilliant novel and one worth every 5 stars I gave it. Given the opportunity to read his Accident on the A35, I jumped at it. Because of the death of the editor Pires, a trainee who subsequently received the manuscripts had put them to one side, not realising that they linked up with a previously published novel of Brunet called The Disappearance of Adele Bedeau. The link was recognised later by another editor at the publishers, who then published a second novel from the manuscripts as The Accident on the A35. Graeme Burnet uses this as a clever structural device to add mystery and intrigue to what otherwise would be a straightforward police mystery novel. The reader sees the novel as being a smaller thing within a larger publishing world. Nothing was mentioned as to the fate of the second manuscript.