Irène (Una investigación del comandante Camille Verhoeven 1)

The most original and powerful crime novel of recent years.

Commander Camille Verhoeven lives the perfect life: he is married to the wonderful Irène, with whom he is expecting their first child. But his happiness shatters after an unusually savage murder. Ever since the news becomes public, the press hounds him and his every move turns into a front-page story.

Verhoeven discovers that the killer has killed before. Each of his crimes seems to pay homage to a classic crime novel, so journalists are quick to give him a nickname: "The Novelist". Those who can help find him join the list of suspects: a bookseller and a university professor who are experts in crime fiction. The investigation thus becomes an intellectual duel, and a terrifying race against time.

You'll never read a crime novel the same way again...

Irène has been awarded the San Clemente Rosalía Abanca Literary Prize.

Critics have said...
"I avoid reading translated novels, but I read Pierre Lemaitre: a truly excellent suspense novelist."
Stephen King

"Commander Verhoeven is a great guy and I have already placed him on the altar occupied by Holmes, Maigret, Wexford or Harry Bosch. A great character, that is, whose adventures, written by Pierre Lemaitre, are grouped under the common title of "The Verhoeven Trilogy" [...] "The Verhoeven Trilogy" is read in one sitting and exudes a remarkable melancholy for an adorable mini-cop and the human race in general. Don't miss it."
Ramón de España, El Periódico de Catalunya

"Lemaitre, currently the best and most in-form Gallic noir novelist, a guy capable of treading on the heels of the master (Banville) Black, in narrative skill and muscular criminal literary magnetism [...] A five-star novel destined to be among the classics of the genre."
Laura Fernández, El Cultural

"A tribute novel, a book that only a lover of crime fiction who is also a great writer can write, a work that does not leave indifferent, that amuses and makes you suffer. A story of violence, of police and of losses. Don't miss it, you will love Camille Verhoeven, you will suffer with him."
Juan Carlos Galindo, Elemental (blog)

"Lemaitre's criminal universe, dark, elegant and intellectual, explodes with Irène."
GQ

"Pierre Lemaitre, the French literary sensation, deserved comparisons with Stieg Larsson and a Dagger Award in 2013 for Alex, a fascinating novel that blends police procedural, thriller and psychological horror. Irène is even better. It is unpredictable. Lemaitre handles the plot with an incredible pulse and leads it to an ingenious and overwhelming ending."
Library Journal

"Addictive, chilling, intelligent and brilliant."
Marcel Berlins, The Times