Central Park

 

From my Teatime Bookshop subscription, a French crime novel from Guillaume Musso. 

Tough Paris cop Alice wakes up in New York’s Central Park handcuffed to a musician, Gabriel. She remembers partying on the Champs-Elysees, but not much more… aside, several years ago, a man murdering her boyfriend and causing her miscarriage. 

An interesting premise, only the implausibilities come in thick and fast within the first few pages. A 2 hour flight from New York to Paris (decades after the Concorde was discontinued)? A cop admitting drink driving? Maybe the French are a little lax with alcohol laws. Nobody seeing two people hot-wiring a car in the middle of a capital city? The book is consistently awash with things characters wouldn’t know, or wouldn’t do – exposition or character traits that don’t sit right regardless of the language translations, clunky metaphors or data protection breaches. 

There are also revelations that characters seem not to know – like large news stories – that even the policewoman seems to have no recollection of. Memory, and how fallible it is, plays a huge part in the plot, but what characters seem to remember and what they don’t – and when – seems cherry-picked to further the story. Alice admits she doesn’t pay attention to details (worrying, for a cop) but then conveniently remembers them when a reveal is necessary. 

The twists and turns are sporadic and with such little grounding, like Musso is throwing in twists to suit a genre rather than because the plot requires it, and the ending is so creepy and abusive that it feels like the reader – like Alice – has just been cheated the whole time. I saw through it. Alice didn’t. 

The memory aspect of the story – what Alice recalls, and doesn’t – becomes a more prominent story strand as we reach the second half of the book. But, like with All is Not Forgotten (another Teatime Bookshop book I’ve reviewed that also had a memory theme) the science of memory and how it impacts on the narrative hasn’t been properly researched. Yes, it’s a crime book and not sci-fi, but a little more detail on this and the opportunities emerging in the field of neuroscience would have deepened and fleshed out the story. Plus, as you know, I’m a psychology nut and I like details when it comes to these things. 

Musso receives high praise on the cover from other writers, but then a lot of mediocre books do. He’s no James Ellroy.