Richard Lafargue is an eminent plastic surgeon haunted by dirty secrets. He has an operating theatre in the basement of his chateau and keeps his partner Eve imprisoned in her bedroom, a room he has equipped with an intercom and 300-watt speakers through which he bellows orders. Eve is only allowed out to be paraded at cocktail parties and on the last Sunday of each month, when the couple visit a young woman in a mental asylum. Following these outings, Lafargue humiliates Eve by forcing her to perform lewd sexual acts with strangers while he watches through a one-way mirror. In alternating chapters, Jonquet introduces seemingly unrelated characters ? a criminal on the run after murdering a policeman, and an abducted young man who finds himself chained naked in a dark chamber, forced to endure all manner of physical torture at the hands of a mysterious stranger, whom he calls ?Mygale?, after a type of tropical spider. All of these characters are caught in a deceitful web, doomed to meet their fate.
My dear friend had recommended this to me some time ago, and it was absolutely wonderful if you like darker stuff. Without spoiling, I did come into this book thinking one thing about the characters, but by the end, my thoughts had changed completely and everything made perfect sense.
I haven't read a good thriller in a long time, and I felt that the twist was quite masterful and unexpected.
Also the version translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith, I think the writing was well done.
Reading updates
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Started reading
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28 July, 2020:
Finished reading
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28 July, 2020:
Reviewed