Crime Novel Grand Prix
Since 2009, the Beaune International Thriller Film Festival and the Cercle Rouge, which brings together personalities from literature and filmmaking who are all keen fans of the shadowy world of the crime thriller, have bestowed an award on the best French and foreign crime novel of the year through two literary awards : the Grand Prix for a French Crime Novel and the Grand Prix for a Foreign Crime Novel.
On Tuesday 21 January 2014, the committee responsible for shortlisting three foreign and three French novels which are then be submitted to the Cercle Rouge met over lunch and agreed that the following titles will compete for the two awards.
> Download Press Release Crime Novel Grand Prix
FOREIGN CRIME NOVEL
LA MAISON DES CHAGRINS
Víctor del Árbol | Publisher : Actes Sud
Eduardo is struggling to get by in a soulless apartment, with the help of alcohol and psychotropic drugs prescribed by the psychiatrist responsible for rehabilitating him into society.
He recently completed a prison sentence for murdering a hit-and-run driver who killed his wife and daughter 14 years previously. A once sought-after artist, he now earns a living turning out anonymous portraits that sell on supermarket shelves. Then one day, his agent hands him a strange commission : a famous violinist wants Eduardo to paint the portrait of the man who killed her son. Behind the man’s physical features, she wants to discern the characteristics of the murderer. Sharing the same painful loss, the client and the artist soon open a Pandora’s box, unleashing all the demons within. Eduardo’s brush brings to life a gallery of tormented souls, shut into the trauma which paralyzed their existence : a young androgynous Chinese man who sells his body ; the son of a fighter in the OAS who got rich from gas and oil in Algeria ; a former agent of Pinochet’s political police ; a godless, lawless Armenian ; a girl abused by her mother’s lover ; and a Sufi mercenary.
These characters haunt the house of sorrows, caught between desperate vengeance and chance, which is just another name for fate.
BORN UNDER PUNCHES
Martyn Waites | Publishers : Rivages
1984 : Margaret Thatcher is in power, the miners are on strike. "Two tribes go to war", to quote a huge hit of the time. In Coldwell, a mining town in northern England, the miners fight to the bitter end, but it’s not enough. Manipulating public opinion, resorting to police violence, the Tories are methodically breaking the down the workers’ movement. For the losing side, the price of defeat turns out to be a high one : 20 years later, Coldwell is a blighted town, afflicted by all social ills.
This is the story of a merciless confrontation with devastating consequences, the story of criminals who prosper on the back of poverty, the story of thwarted, tragic but also poignant loves.
Born Under Punches is a fresco of a community brought to its knees, fighting for survival for two generations, shot through with the music of 1970s and 80s Britain.
THE SINGER’S GUN
Emily St. John Mandel | Publishers : Rivages
A manager for a New York company, Anton is finally going to make good on his wedding plans with Sophie, a virtuoso violinist with an unstable personality. But the honeymoon on the island of Ischia is cut short, and Sophie returns to the US alone while Anton awaits a mysterious rendezvous. He spends the time thinking about his family of crooks, his cousin who keeps involving him in dangerous illicit dealings, and his desire to lead a “normal” life. But can he ?
Why did his professional life implode in the weeks before his wedding ? Why did they take away his secretary and his co-workers and move his office to the basement ? Why did he once again agree to a role in the mysterious game that his cousin is playing ? Anton waits on the Italian island. A messenger is on the way to provide the answers – but not those he was hoping for.
FRENCH CRIME NOVEL
SOUVIENS-TOI DE M’OUBLIER
Régis Descott | Publishers : JC Lattès
Max was a hard-up artist when he painted Iris. These days, his canvasses sell for prices he’d never have dreamt of back then. He paints darkly realistic paintings of cynical-looking monkeys. He’s done with nudes and children’s portraits. Iris, a political journalist, has spent the last two years forgetting her relationship with Max, rebuilding her life with Antoine, a power-hungry member of parliament with his eye on a ministerial post.
But one evening, when she runs into this man she once loved so much, and who painted her and her alone for four years, Iris comes up against a terrifying reality : Max doesn’t recognize her. Is it vengeance ? Despair ? Amnesia ? How did they become strangers to one another, with these memories that now only she retains ?
The strange trio soon finds out that you sometimes have a lot to lose by raking over the past.
UN NOTAIRE PEU ORDINAIRE
Yves Ravey | Publishers : Les Éditions de Minuit
Madame Rebernak doesn’t want to see her cousin Freddy when he comes out of prison. She’s afraid he’ll lay into her daughter, Clémence. That’s why she decides to talk to Montussaint, the notary who has already done her a fair few favors.
VOSTOK
Jean-Hugues Oppel | Publishers : Rivages
Somewhere in Africa, in the stifling heat, the Métal-Ik company is extracting “rare earths”, strategically important metals essential for many high-tech applications. Certain multinationals, as we know, do not pay much regard to labor laws.
So when a UN agency sends Tanya Lawrence to look into operations, she’s clearly not welcome. In the face of a wall of hostility, she can only count on Tony Donizzi, the guide assigned to her by the consortium. The climate soon grows darker at Métal-Ik’s mining colony, as another, much larger yet less perceptible threat looms.
THE CERCLE ROUGE
Cécile Chabrol Maistre, screenwriter
Laurent Chalumeau, writer, screenwriter, lyricist
Benoît Cohen, screenwriter and director
Antoine de Caunes, journalist, screenwriter, director and actor
Jean Hernandez, film distributor
Pierre Jolivet, screenwriter and director
Pierre Lescure, journalist, businessman and director of the Théâtre Marigny
Joëlle Losfeld, publisher
Olivier Marchal, screenwriter, director and actor
Claude Mesplède, critic and historian, specialist in the cop thriller
Frédéric Schoendoerffer, screenwriter and director
