I've been to Perpingnan and Collioure and thought it would be fun to read a mystery set there. It wasn't. Poor plot. Poor writing. Lots of sentence fragments. Do they not use subjects and verbs in France? I reread many sentence fragments in the hope of finding a whole. The denouement was poorly conceived. Overall, disappointing. ( )

A police investigator whose family is very important to him. A refreshing read from a "family man's" point of view. Author's description of the French Riviera in summer puts you there. Plot is interesting and writing quickly pulls you through the story. Will read his other novels. Really liked protagonist. ( )

Loved it. Great end of summer read! ( )

A languid police procedural set in rural France that eventually comes to a satisfying conclusion. It's a good introduction to Inspector Sebag and his colleagues, a bunch of quirky French cops. ( )

The setting of the novel is Perpignan, in the Catalan region of France, near the Spanish border, where the author himself now lives. It is the height of summer; many including Gilles Sebag's own family are on holiday, and tourists from the north are flooding into the district.

Years of police work have left both Sebag and his partner Molino jaded and they have a reputation of being hard to motivate. Sebag does his best to work an "ordinary" working day but as his children and his wife leave for their summer holidays and he becomes an "empty-nester" he begins to think of nothing else but the cases he is working on: primarily the disappearance of a local taxi driver and his final passenger, a Dutch tourist.

An engrossing read. Does the town now have a serial killer or are the three cases on the books all separate events? ( )