Michael McDowell, Olivier Frébourg and Leonardo Padura: books not to be missed

The Golden Needles

By Michael McDowell, trans. from the American by Jean Szlamowicz.

Monsieur Toussaint Louverture, 520 p., €12.90.

L’Express rating: 3/5

It’s hard not to succumb to temptation. After the crazy success of the saga Blackwater by Michael McDowell (1950-1999), published in six volumes in spring 2022, the Monsieur Toussaint Louverture editions have decided to translate five other of the great novels of the American graphomaniac by 2025, starting with The Golden Needles, dating from 1980. All on the same principle of a work in pocket format at a low price (here €12.90 for 520 pages) and with a deliciously old-fashioned cover designed by Pedro Oyarbide (“with a sort of of dark and flashy Dickens”). After the twisted story of the Caskey clan, rich landowners of a fictitious town in Alabama, taking place from 1919 to 1969, here is that of two other clans, very urban ones. Or a thrilling dive into the depths of New York in the year of our Lord 1882, controlled by the Democrats, as miserable as it was opulent depending on the neighborhood.

Between Canal and Bleecker, an area called “the black triangle”, it is the Shanks who reign, a line of women with a colorful pedigree: receiver, abortionist, paper trafficker, thief… On the upscale side, towards Fourth Avenue and Madison Square , make way for the Stallworths, fierce Republicans, counting among them an austere and implacable judge, a right-thinking daughter, a son who is a pastor in the Presbyterian Church, a son-in-law who is a lawyer… The bad and the good? No, all despicable (with two exceptions); no salvation either on the side of the police and politicians, the vast majority of whom are adept at bribes and other compromises. As for the press, it does not stand out for its objectivity. What makes this serial novel so eminently sympathetic is this “dreadful, dirty and nasty” style enhanced by the confrontation between these two worlds which should never have intersected. We also delight in the luxury of details provided by a Hugolian McDowell, and we congratulate ourselves on not being born at the end of the 19th century in this slightly damaged Big Apple. Marianne Payot

Only brother

by Olivier Frébourg.

Mercure de France, 208 p., €19.80.

L’Express rating: 3/5

What do you do when you have lost a brother, your hero, and you are an editor? Cry and write. This is what Olivier Frébourg, boss of Éditions de l’Equateur, and also and above all the only little brother of Thierry, died at the age of 60, on March 13, 2021. A stupid death, due to a medical error , the improper removal of a catheter inserted in the jugular causing a gas embolism. A tragedy, and a shame for this “saint of medicine”, a brilliant associate professor who devoted nearly thirty years of his life to this Charles-Nicolle University Hospital in Rouen, moving tirelessly from his genetics laboratory to his consultation department. Inconsolable, Olivier recounts the happy years, the golden age of the Frébourg family’s long stay in Martinique from 1969-1972 – the father, a naval commander, was appointed weapons captain at Fort-de-France – then the adolescence in the warm house of Dieppe before flying to Paris. And always, Thierry, five years older than him, plays his role of guardrail, watchman to perfection.

After March 13, after the absence of condolences and serious investigation from the hospital, the author had only one thought left: to avenge his brother, “to lift the concrete block covering the truth about the circumstances of his death”, obtain a public apology. And in doing so, summoning Hemingway, Poussin, Loti, Hugo, he delivers a wonderful hymn to siblings, to this brother so admired and loved: “He was the sun. I was the moon.” PM

Tropical hurricanes

By Leonardo Padura, trans. from Spanish (Cuba) by René Solis.

Métailié, 496 P., €23.50.

L’Express rating: 4/5

In Cuba, in the spring of 2016, things seem about to change, finally. Barack Obama is due to arrive on the island in a few days, and the Rolling Stones should soon follow. Hardly enough to arouse the enthusiasm of the former cop Mario Conde, skeptical of the eternal who, like the vast majority of his fellow citizens, lives on a small-time basis, in this case as a security guard in a fashionable bar where tourists spend the equivalent of their monthly salary for a bottle of champagne. Out of friendship for a former colleague, Conde agrees to help with an investigation: the body of a certain Reynaldo Quevedo was found in his luxurious apartment, amputated of three fingers and his virile member. Quevedo is by no means unknown, he is a former henchman of the regime who for decades brought the island’s artists to their knees and monopolized their works. Suffice to say that there is no shortage of putative assassins.

For his detective’s tenth investigation, Leonardo Padura pulled out all the stops, literally. On top of this first story, the Cuban author superimposes another plot, set more than a century earlier, when Havana dreamed of itself as the Nice of the Americas, a case of murders of prostitutes against a backdrop of rivalries between French and local pimps. Throughout these two stories which will eventually meet, Padura points out the turpitudes of an island having crushed its inhabitants over several generations, a land which could have been a land of plenty if the winds of History had not constantly swept away by a fatal breath. Bertrand Bouard