Quai du Polar 2022: Books shortlisted for the readers prize, Book read Number 6
Gabrielle Massat : Trente grammes (Éditions du Masque)
The truth is, Yannick, that you dont want to see us kill each other, right? Aslanov is like a father to you, and me,
I’m the love of your life. From your point of view we’re in a Shakespearian drama.***
I’ll keep this short, Yannick, who works for a russian mafia person, Aslanov, handling his money laundering through works of Art scheme is found by his lover Phoenix, part Ouzbek, part Russian in a near critical state after being force fed 30 grammes of paracetamol, to make it look like a “suicide”. so here are the two charachters from the opening quote.
Yannick, then, is a main character who, after a liver transplant, drinks, takes drugs and seeks out a different partner each night for “wild” sex. Yannick’s body is rejecting his second liver, if you ask me his second liver should be rejecting Yannick! Well last years “detective” was blind. How about sex with the detective as here:
I can’t decide if I should be happy or worried about your invitation. Then I remembered your appetite for oral sex and decided to be overjoyed. Yannick looks her over, amused. To be more accurate, the climbing hall isn’t the lie that Boussaïdi serves up to her husband and her two adolescent kids to justify her absences, only a part of the truth:***
Yannick’s brother, Olivier is wheel chair bound after a car accident and his lover Phoenix works as Aslanov’s assassin. After selling a stolen “Bacon” to Mboyo, the nigerian Drug queen of Toulouse, Yannick comes up with the idea of getting a fake painted, authenticised and destroyed, enter Darya, russian of course, who inhabits the painter in order to create the fakes. here this means Francis Bacon, a very disturbed painter.
One evening he receives a short sharp SMS from Olivier telling him that Antoine Riva had accepted his invitation to the Opening Night. At the time, Yannick could no longer remember why he had been so set on meeting up with the Expert, then it came back to him, and he gets another crazy message from Darya/Francis and says to himself that he’ll come back to it later.***
Enough! This was a long book, and as improbable as last year’s, The taste of my mother’s lipstick, This book really did not please me, I like my crime with a dash of credibility, hope they stop choosing the same authors for multiple years…..
First Published in French as “Trente grammes” in 2021 by Éditions du Masque.
*** My translation
The quotes as read in French before translation
La réalité, Yannick, c’est que tu ne veux pas nous voir nous entre-tuer, n’est-ce pas? Aslanov est un père pour toi, et moi, je suis l’amour de ta vie. De ton point de vue, on est en plein drame shakespearien.
Je n’arrivais pas à décider si je devais me réjouir ou m’inquiéter de ton invitation. Puis je me suis souvenue de ton appétence pour le sexe oral et j’ai décidé de me réjouir. Yannick la détaille, amusé. Pour être tout à fait juste, la salle d’escalade n’est pas le mensonge que Boussaïdi sert à son mari et ses deux ados pour justifier ses absences, seulement une partie de la vérité:
Un soir, il reçoit un SMS laconique d’Olivier lui annonçant qu’Antoine Riva a accepté l’invitation à son vernissage. Sur le coup, Yannick ne se rappelle plus pourquoi il voulait tant rencontrer l’expert, puis ça lui revient, et il reçoit un autre message délirant de Darya/Francis et se dit qu’il verra ça plus tard.
South of Paris books 