Baptiste: The Blade Must Fall: The official prequel to the hit television show

by David Hewson

The official prequel to the hit television show

France, 1976. Baptiste is an intelligent but somewhat naive detective, sent to work in Clermiers, a town filled with corruption. A girl goes missing, presumed dead after bloody clothes are found close to an illicit party near an abandoned chateau. Baptiste believes he's nailed the culprit, the eccentric Gilles Mailloux. When he appears in court, the public call for the guillotine - and that's the sentence Mailloux gets. But as Mailloux awaits an appeal for clemency, he asks to see Baptiste, who's still haunted by the fact the girl's body remains missing. As the clock ticks towards execution hour, Baptiste begins to realise he may have made a terrible mistake...

Genres: Crime, Audiobook

324 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 25, 2024

About the author

DAVID HEWSON was born in Yorkshire in 1953. His books range from the Nic Costa series set in Italy to adaptations of The Killing in Copenhagen and the Pieter Vos series in Amsterdam.
He's adapted Shakespeare for Audible and in 2018 won the Audie for best original work for Romeo and Juliet: A Novel, narrated by Richard Armitage.
2019 sees the release of a new, full-cast Audible drama set in New York, Last Seen Wearing, and a standalone novel set in the Faroe Islands, Devil's Fjord.

Series:
Nic Costa

Pieter Vos

The Killing

Reviews

[Steve In Ludlow · Rating 3 out of 5]

There was a lot to like about this book, great scene setting and character work. It just dragged on a little too much.
It's 1976, and Baptiste, a young Parisian cop, is farmed out to a backwater north of Paris. So too has a young cop from Marseilles.
Almost as they arrive they walk into a missing person case in which local captain Dupont, seems disinterested. She's black and from the poor part of the town known locally as Merdeville.
The plot moves between summer when the girl has gone missing and winter when the man apparently charged with her murder is waiting to be executed by guillotine. Baptiste is trying to get final information about the girl before the execution and maybe help with a reprieve.

[Mike Cotton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well at least it got better towards the end. Very average thriller exploiting the success of the TV series (which I loved). The writing is unexceptional and the plot twists are unsurprising. To some extent it reminded me of a Stephen King book set in small town America, but King writes so much better than this even when he produces the odd turkey (Fairy Tale springs to mind).It's okay as far as it goes but don't expect that you'll be desperately searching for other books by the author. Three stars is generous.

[Starsailor · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked this book, I listened to the audio book and although it's long and sort of a slow burn, it pulled me in and I felt it would be a real page turner if I was reading it. The audio book was read by a French man and this made it really atmospheric. Some of the mistakes Baptiste makes had me shouting 'Noooo!!' at my car radio and some of it was shocking and had me shouting 'Mon Dieu!. Not my usual read, but I really enjoyed this one. I've read a couple of other books by David Hewson and enjoyed them all.

[Stephanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Slow burner. I loved the tv series with the actor and I like his voice and quirky way of saying some words. At first listen of the audiobook, I wasn’t sure if I was enjoying it. I briefly started listening to another book, but I returned to it. I then got used to the narration and grew to love it. Some words are not pronounced absolutely perfectly, but I started to enjoy that. His voice is very soothing. The story grows on you and I’m glad I stuck with it. When I finished the book, I felt a bit sad that it had finished. If you loved Baptiste on the tv, you have to read/listen to this book.

[Sarah Woods · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would've liked to give this book 3.5 stars. It contained a lot of interesting historical information and a discussion of the difference between justice and the law. The usual power dynamics were present, but the story as a whole felt a little formulaic. Overall, it's a good enough beach read.

[Fiona R · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF

[Pam Tickner · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit slow but I loved that it was read by the actor from the series Tcheky Karyo.

[Robin M · Rating 5 out of 5]

A slow start but if you're a fan of the series stick with it. It picks up and has the same back and forth pattern of the series whilst sticking very true to cannon

[Mrs Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good story of Julien Baptiste's early working life, searching for a missing girl.

[Christine · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this fairly slow.

[Debbie · Rating 1 out of 5]

Didn't finish