The Moment Before Drowning

by James Brydon

In 1959, a French Resistance hero investigates a murder in a small Breton town, while awaiting his own trial.

December 1959: a furious anticolonial war rages in Algeria. Captain Jacques le Garrec, a former detective and French Resistance hero, returns to France in disgrace, traumatized after two years of working in the army intelligence services, and accused of a brutal crime.

As le Garrec awaits trial in the tiny Breton town where he grew up, he is asked to look into a disturbing and unsolved murder committed the previous winter. A local teenage girl was killed and her bizarrely mutilated body was left on display on the heathland in a way that no one could understand.

Le Garrec’s investigations draw him into the dark past of the town, still haunted by memories of the German Occupation. As he tries to reconstruct the events of the girl’s murder, the violence and guilt intertwine with his own recollections of Algeria and threaten to submerge him.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Mystery, Crime

239 pages, Hardcover

First published July 3, 2018

Reviews

[Marjorie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Capitaine Jacques le Garrec has returned to Paris in disgrace. He was a hero in the French Resistance but now is facing charges of a terrible crime that occurred in Algiers, where he was working in the Army Intelligence Service. While he’s waiting trial, he’s asked to investigate the unsolved murder of a local teenage girl. The French town where this murder took place has a history of German occupation that has left its impact on the residents. As le Garrec looks into the murder, his memories of what happened in Algiers often collides with the investigation.

I’m very impressed by this author’s debut novel. It’s a short novel but Mr. Brydon packs in so much emotion, suspense, tension and heartbreak. This story literally took my breath away and has left me shaken. Be forewarned that this book is not for the faint hearted. It’s a brutally violent book with graphic descriptions of horrendous torture. Capitaine le Garrec is a broken man, torn apart by his work in Algiers. The moral dilemma he’s faced with is a tragic one. There was never a moment in this book that I wasn’t completely engrossed. The ending was pure perfection. This book will haunt me for some time to come. This author is one to be reckoned with and I hope his next literary work will be published soon.

Most highly recommended.

This book was given to me by the publisher in return for an honest review.

[Carol Ann Tack · Rating 4 out of 5]

Terrific and gripping debut!
Detective Jacques le Garrec returns home to Brittany to await trial for potential war crimes committed in Algeria. While home, le Garrec's friend asks him to help solve the grisly murder of a student at the local school. Absolute page-turner and highly recommended. Graphic violence.

[Tonstant Weader · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Moment Before Drowning has everything I love in a mystery, a strong sense of place, a historical connection in time and place, rich language and description, intrigue, moral equivocation, a complex and flawed main character, and literature and philosophy are woven into the thoughts and conversations of the main characters. Add to that, it takes place in the same setting as Martin Walker’s Bruno, Chief of Police series, and I was eager to read.

In The Moment Before Drowning, Jacques le Gerrac has come back to France to be tried for the murder of an Algerian woman. While waiting for trial and at loose ends, he goes to his hometown where he is immediately asked to investigate an unsolved murder. A young girl, Anne-Lise, was murdered and mutilated and her body was staged. The local police officer is more thug than thinker. Unable to wrest confessions after “interrogation” the case has stalled.

Gerrac interviews friends, family, and possible lovers building a picture of Anne-Lise However, his investigation and his conception of Anne-Lise are continually interrupted by his memory of Amira, the Algerian woman he is accused of murdering and his observation and participation in the torture interrogations of the FLN, the Algerian resistance. From history, we know there were many atrocities and Gerrac is revealed to be a reluctant participant, persuaded to serve out of the idea that if people of good will were perpetrating the ill-conceived war and repression, it would be somehow better. This is a good example of how good people do evil. If I didn’t do it, someone who enjoyed it would do it.



Despite everything going for it, I was disappointed in The Moment Before Drowning. There are several reasons, but they are all related to how didactic it is. Mostly it’s a failure to let ideas develop naturally, but delivering them instead as something Gerrac reads, questions answered in class, speechifying by characters, and courtroom testimony. It’s not natural, not conversational. It sticks out like the sore thumb it is, shoved into an intriguing story, distorting the narrative. The primary purpose of a story is the story. When that is displaced by a desire to indict the past, the story fails. It’s even more frustrating when I agree with the moral lesson, but find it intrusive.

As a mystery, it is only fair if you take the time to put the German and French quotations into Google translate or are familiar with Rilke and Baudelaire. When the primary clues are untranslated, it’s annoying to have to look them up. Still, it’s technically fair, but why leave the French poetry untranslated when after all, the entire story is about this French man in France. It would not be in a foreign language to him as he reads it so it should not be for us. It seemed like needless pedantry.

However, the book is not terrible. There is a real mystery and Gerrac is an interesting and compelling character. I can imagine that sequels may be more intriguing and more compelling now the author does not have to show off how smart he is anymore.

The Moment Before Drowning will be published on July 3rd. I received a copy from Akashic Books through LibraryThing and Edelweiss

The Moment Before Drowning at Akashic Books
James Brydon author profile as crossword setter at The Guardian

https://tonstantweaderreviews.wordpre...

[Jaclyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Stay tuned for a full review which will posted to my blog

[Jessica · Rating 2 out of 5]

(I received an ARC from a Goodreads Giveaway.)

The Moment Before Drowning tells the story of a previously lauded resistance hero during the French-Algerian war. Jacques le Garrec is sent back to his sleepy seaside French hometown after being accused of a heinous crime while serving in Algeria. As soon as he arrives home, a past acquaintance pleads for him to investigate a recent murder of a young woman. As Garrec begins investigating the murder, the truth about the Algerian crime is also brought to light.

There is no doubt that this book is extremely well written, however; rather than a mystery novel, it serves as a commentary on the male obsession with the female body. Our main character, Jacques le Garrec, is barely fleshed out but is still viewed as the one light of truth and justice within this entire novel. The remaining cast of male characters are all horrible people (crooked cop, male chauvinist pig and proud Nazi, selfish and naive revolutionary, creepy unstable vagrant, etc.). The person we're not supposed to suspect, the one I suspected from the beginning, is of course the only other seemingly innocent male character: the professor.

Throughout the course of the novel Garrec is obsessed with "seeing" Anne Lise, this beautiful and smart young lady who was so horribly murdered and mutilated. But I felt I never truly "saw" any of the characters. (If anything, I saw female body parts eg. heaving breasts and toned thighs and nipples brushing cloth, or buttocks peeking seductively etc. The typical masculine way in which feminine bodies are written). They were hastily introduced and very seldom built upon, leaving me not really invested in any of them or their stories. And the flashbacks Garrec kept having to Algeria just felt like they were posed to make us believe he was some Saint. That he was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time and was trying to make up for his previous mistakes.

I think the end is really what did this book in for me. I would have probably given it 3 stars if not for the last paragraph. As Garrec is driving away with another abused and mistreated woman (savior moment who knows how many, I've lost count), he's having to ignore the scent of her perfume, the tightness in his chest and lungs he gets when he catches a glimpse of her the same feelings the probable murderer wrote about having to tamper down when in the presence of Anne Lise. He has to concentrate on driving because the idea of being alone in the car with her has his mind racing...It leaves the reader thinking: "it could have just as easily been him." So all that this book really brings to mind is the idea that any man, in a fit of lust and passion, can be quickly turned into a murderer. Mystery solved.

[Hayleigh · Rating 1 out of 5]

I wanted to enjoy this book, but ultimately gave up on it. I was intrigued by the narrator's past in Algiers and wanted to see how the two major storylines tied together, but not badly enough that I could make myself finish what turned out to be a very clunky novel. Even though it's a short read, I just couldn't make myself stick with it to the end. While this book has moments where the paragraphs grabbed me and made me want to watch the plot play out, those moments were overshadowed by my frustration at the writing style. There is a lot of "telling" instead of "showing" going on here, and the novel is packed with a lot of description that doesn't add to the story and seems to be there simply so the reader knows something without the investigator having to "discover" it. Similarly, a lot of details are revealed in this "telling" style -- the investigator discovers a newspaper article, journal entry, or even some drafts of the victim's essays, which were not particularly interesting segments for me to force my way through.

[Rick Mitchell · Rating 1 out of 5]

First the writing. I thought this was a translation and was shocked to see the author was English. I thought then he must be a professor, but he is a crossword writer. Perhaps that is why the choice of words that was stilted and at times seemed as if a thesaurus was nearby.

Then the plots. Two of them, actually. Both filled with torture and human mutilation. Dark stuff, for sure. Nothing much else. This seems to be an expose on human cruelty.

One of the more annoying things is the interceding of the omniscient third person. It pops up in mid-conversation so the reader has to go back and figure out what was said and what was interjected as necessary to the story.

Perhaps the thing I liked least was the tone and conversation of the characters. All seemed to be imbued with a great vocabulary, tremendous insight and philosophy worthy of undergraduates hanging around the dorm drinking beer on a Friday night.

If I were to describe the book very briefly, it would be overwritten and extremely dark

[Kerry Pickens · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received this book as an ARC from Askashic Books, and read in the book in two evenings. It's probably one of the most interesting books I have read lately. You could describe it as French noir, but noir is the sense that the film Casablanca was noir. The main character fought in the French resistance and then Algeria, and returns to France to charged with a war crime. While waiting for the trial, he investigates the death of a young girl who was half German. The book perfectly captures those turbulent times when Europe tried to regain its balance after WW II, and there was no police protection for anyone. Kudos to the author for a beautifully written first novel.

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

An atmospheric thriller in the tradition of French existential crime – by an English man paying homage I think. A disgraced army officer returns to France to face trial by his peers for crimes committed in occupied Algeria – themselves a moveable concept given the history of how the French army kept control there. Years ago I saw the film “The Battle of Algiers” and footage from that kept returning to mind as I read Brydon’s novel. Details of what he, and his peers, did are brutal and unsparing but the real conflict is in the mind of the narrator as, shifting from one moral pole to the opposite, he’s asked to investigate the murder of a young French girl in Brittany, near the house he's been told he must stay in while awaiting his own hearing.

Anyone who’s been to Brittany will recognise this bleak landscape, isolated dwellings, and rugged people. But most British readers will have visited for summer holidays. Back in December 1959, the characters of this novel are still close to the damage wrought by being occupied themselves; the bullied become the bullies or retreat into a confusion of despair and silence; the vicious weather swipes at them and it’s hard to tell good from evil as one crime blurs with another, and another and characters shift from investigator to suspect.

If all that sounds too miserable to embark on, take heart from it being so beautifully written. The book takes you effortlessly from page to page, and will echo in your mind long after you close the cover. Recommended.

[Laura Henderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Set in the aftermath of WWII, as Europe is still dealing in the aftermath of the French Resistance, this novel follows Captain Jacques Le Garrec. Jacques had been accused of a brutal crime and is awaiting trial. While awaiting his fate he investigates a brutal murder that happened in the Previous winter.

As the novel delves deeper and deeper into this mystery, the novel becomes more and more suspenseful. This novel is fantastically written and well researched. The time period is on point as it delivers beautifully written descriptions. You can tell the author did a good job researching this time period. The setting is well done as is descriptions of locations.

Overall, I found this novel vastly entertaining and impossible to put down. The writing had me hooked from page one! Such a unique little mystery set in a time that was heightened with fear and panic surrounding the the story's time period. The characters were well written and diverse. I found myself drawn to each character in this book as each pulls the story together in a unique way. This is a definite one click read!

5/5 Stars

***I received this book as an ARC from Askashic Books in exchange for an honest review***

[Allen Pasternak · Rating 5 out of 5]

As I read this book, the concept of “literary mystery” kept nagging at the back of my brain until it emerged at the forefront. I’m not even sure what a “literary mystery” is. Is the term applied to the likes of Crime & Punishment and The Stranger”? While this novel has similarities to both of those, that’s not it. This one is a more tidy fit into the mystery genre without being genre fiction. There are two crimes at the heart of this story - one in Algeria in 1959 as the French fought terrorists and an unsolved murder of a young woman who in the French village of Sainte-Elizabeth a year earlier. Jacques le Garrec is the white knight narrator at the center of both investigations. Is it Brydon’s masterful character development and prose that shifts this book into the realm of ‘literary’? No, there’s something more than that that makes the novel transcendent. The backbone of this novel is ethical and philosophical questions and addresses some profound issues. I look forward to Brydon’s next book. The return of le Garrec would be welcome.

[Larry · Rating 3 out of 5]

Brydon's novel has two story lines. Captain Jacques le Garrec, a Resistance war hero and successful detective, has been drafted into the French army during the Algerian Rebellion. Serving in French intelligence, he commits what is characterized as a war crime, and is sent back to france too await trial. While waiting, he returns to his boyhood home, where he is persuaded by a friend to investigate the murder of a young woman a bit less than a year earlier. The novel switches between le Garrec's investigation and his trial, and results in a successful resolution of both. It is well written in a sort of emotionally laden way. It is the emotion that gets in the way of my enjoyment, and a higher rating.

[Plover · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had high hopes for this. They were not realized. Though not terrible, I didn’t care for the book. Maybe closer to two-and-a-half stars. None of the characters were likable. The ending left me merely shrugging my shoulders. I never understood if this was intended as a murder mystery, or a story of French atrocities in Algeria. Maybe a combination, but it didn’t succeed as either. The likely killer was evident very early in the story, and I’m not sure the mystery was truly solved. I guess the narrator was supposed to be exposing the atrocities in Algeria, but that aspect was just a grossly detailed description of torture, which I skimmed for the most part—I didn’t see the point.

[Jim Courter · Rating 4 out of 5]

The late Ruth Cavins, who edited the mystery imprint of St. Martin's Press, liked to refer to the best mysteries as works of literature about crime. The Moment Before Drowning meets that description. It's dark, with almost no relief to the tension. I'd prefer that the foreign-language passages, especially the poetry that serves as clues, be rendered into English, and in a couple of places characters hold forth on colonialism in ways that sound like they're being read from a tract on political correctness. Overall, though, it held my interest.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was very dark and intense. I thought the author pulled everything together very well at the end and connected the protagonist's experiences in Algiers with the case he was working on. One technical thing that bugged me-- if you're quoting a poem in another language, please give the readers a translation. It is frustrating not knowing what's being referred to. Thanks to the publisher for proving an ARC of the book.

[Tati · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found that the last couple chapters are really the strength of this book. The excitement of the mystery and the main characters motives are at their most compelling. I was misdirected just enough about the identity of the true culprit that I kept second guessing my own thoughts. Unfortunately, it was hard for me to become invested in any of the characters and I spent a lot of the book unsure if the pace was ever going to pick up.

[Rosemary Rigsby · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sometimes taking a grab-bag of mysteries from the library is a good thing. I probably wouldn't have selected this book from the stacks, but from the first sentence, it hooked me. Who could resist "a girl whose martyred body he cannot leave to the earth."? The setting, the time-frame, the swirl of life after WWII, and the commentary on France in Algeria, pulled me into a vortex that held me as captive as the characters in this story. Because we are all captives of something. Do you know?

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

A powerful narrative as the tormented protagonist seeks to solve a bewildering mystery, while reliving his deeply disturbing past. Moral and ethical decisions posed during both World War II and in French Algeria are brought to the fore and given real consequences. The author’s strong and vigorous writing pulls the story along and makes it hard to put the book down.

[Brandon Haubrich · Rating 1 out of 5]

I found this book a very tough read. I saw a review on this book saying that they thought this was a translation and they were shocked that the author was English.
I could not agree more with that statement, the wording and writing was just not great at all.
I wanted to like this book, I ended up finishing it though even though I contemplated not finishing it like 50 times.

[Andy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received this book as an ARC from Akashic books through Librarything.

What a great debut. So much to like. The atmosphere was amazing, the historical context fascinating, and the moral implications deep and relevant to today’s society.

[Rachael · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not really a fan of this book; there were some anachronisms that didn't seem to fit the time frame of the period in which the book was set. Had a hard time getting past some of the unecessarily long and complex work choices -- i.e. putrefaction instead of rot or decay.

[Ashley · Rating 4 out of 5]

This mystery is told in a refreshing new way, different from any other mystery I've ever read. It almost becomes more of an internal struggle for the investigator as he deals with some post traumatic stress. I thought it was a really good book!

[Joanne Garbato · Rating 4 out of 5]

Love the darkness of this mystery. Good debut for James Brydon.

[Terri · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was just too violent and dark for my taste.

[Ed · Rating 4 out of 5]

Police thriller based in 1959 of a hero, guilty of the actions of the Algerian French interrogators and accused of murder, comes home to Brittany to solve another murder and find his ownself.

[Sandy Fauser · Rating 1 out of 5]

I could not get into this book at all. The wording did not flow for me therefore I just couldn't grasp the story.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Intensely descriptive, often thought provoking. At times, it got very dark and violent.

[Christine Castaldi · Rating 3 out of 5]

A combination of detective story and historical fiction! Very good!

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very poetic. You can tell this author is a crossword puzzle compiler. Intellectually challenging.

[Randy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not my usual read. A dark mystery novel set in France.