Verwandte Artikel zu Another Sun (An Anne Marie Laveaud Novel, Band 1)

Another Sun (An Anne Marie Laveaud Novel, Band 1) - Softcover

Buch 1 von 2: The Anne Marie Laveaud Mysteries

Williams, Timothy

 
9781616953638: Another Sun (An Anne Marie Laveaud Novel, Band 1)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 1616953632 ISBN 13: 9781616953638
Verlag: Soho Crime, 2014

Inhaltsangabe

The long-awaited return of Timothy Williams, CWA award-winning grand master of crime fiction, whom The Observer named one of the “10 Best Modern European Crime Writers” 
 
The sun-drenched Caribbean island of Guadeloupe is technically part of France, subject to French law and loyal to the French Republic. But in 1980, the scars of colonialism are still fresh, and ethnic tensions and political unrest seethe just below the surface of everyday life.
 
French-Algerian judge Anne Marie Laveaud relocated to this beautiful Caribbean island confident that she could make it her new home. But her day-to-day life is rife with frustration. Now she is assigned a murder case in which she is sure the chief suspect, an elderly ex-con named Hégésippe Bray, is a political scapegoat. Her superiors are dismissive of her efforts to prove Bray innocent, and to add insult to injury, Bray himself won’t even speak to her because she’s a woman. But she won’t give up, and Anne Marie’s investigations lead her into a complex tangle of injustice, domestic terrorists, broken hearts, and maybe even voodoo.

Die Inhaltsangabe kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

CWA award-winning author Timothy Williams has written six crime novels set in Italy featuring Commissario Piero Trotti, as two novels set in the French Caribbean, Another Sun and The Honest Folk of Guadeloupe. In 2011, the Observer placed him among the ten best modern European crime novelists. Born in London and educated at St. Andrews, Williams has taught at the universities of Poitiers in France, Bari and Pavia in Italy, and at Jassy in Romania. He taught for thirty in the French West Indies but now spends his time between Europe and Africa. For more information, visit his website: https://www.facebook.com/thdw.co.uk.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

1: Tim tim
  
It was past six o’clock and night had begun to fall.
The group of men moved aside as the Land Rover came down the track. The whip aerial swayed against the red sky. The yellow beams were like two eyes.
The Land Rover halted and the engine was turned off. The toads resumed their loud monotonous croaking in the grass.
Two white men jumped down.  They wore kepis, neat khaki uniforms and black shoes. They walked towards the group of waiting men.
The driver remained sitting behind the wheel.          
“What is it?” one of the gendarmes asked, turning to an old man.
The old man was holding a bicycle. He had one hand on the cracked leather saddle and with the other, he pointed to the middle of the pond. The black water reflected the lingering light of day.
A dark, humped shape was caught among the reeds.
“A man?”
The old man shrugged.
The others stood in silence. Some wore rubber boots, several had narrow machetes that hung loosely in their hands. Their eyes followed the two white gendarmes.
“I’ve never seen this pond before.”                                                                                 
“It comes with the rain.” The old man spoke in Creole.
The fronds swayed and creaked. The pond lay in the hollow of the sloping valley. Grass-covered hills ran down to the edge of the white dirt track and its two parallel lines of coconut trees. To the east, against the darkening hill top, rose the gaunt silhouette of the derelict sugar refinery. A couple of hangars and a tall, crumbling chimney that pointed to the sky and the rising half moon.
The gendarme turned to his companion. “You’d better pull whatever it is out of the water.”
“The water is infected—there’s bilharzia.” Anxiety in the eyes beneath the brim of the kepi.
“The cows drink the water.” The captain pointed to the dark forms of an indistinct herd of cattle grazing on the far side of the pond.
As if in acquiescence, a cow emitted a single, mournful low. Elsewhere in the valley, another cow gave an answering call.
The third gendarme slipped from behind the driver’s seat and began to undress. “I’ll go.”
The captain returned to the vehicle and leaned inside the Land Rover. He then clambered onto the rigid bonnet. A searchlight on the roof came alight, and he aimed the beam toward the dark water. A mist had started to form, dancing wisps along the surface.
The gendarme had stripped to his underclothes; he walked across the grass and stepped into the pond.
“A damn fool wanting to fish.” Behind the searchlight, the captain lit a cigarette.
The old man said, almost under his breath. “No fish in that water.”
The black gendarme stepped further into the pond. A circle of light followed his movements. He gave a curse, stumbled and began to swim, only his head above the water. A couple of strokes brought him alongside the floating object.
He stood up, took hold of the nerveless bundle and waded back toward the edge of the pond, bright rivulets streaming down his face and body. He squeezed his nose and spat into the water. “He’s dead.”
Throwing away his cigarette, the captain jumped from the roof of the Land Rover while the crowd moved forward. Many hands helped drag the body onto the grass.
The corpse lay like a landed fish, transfixed by the single beam of the searchlight.
The captain crouched down and ran his hand over the bloated, pale flesh. In the light, the fingers cast spiderlike shadows.
“Gunshot wounds.”
Red mounds against the white skin.
“Stand back,” he ordered and, tugging with both hands, the captain pulled at the corpse.
It rolled over slowly, the body faster than the head. The mouth fell open and water ran from colorless lips. The throat gurgled.
The old man with the bicycle peered at the body. He clicked his tongue.
The captain turned, shading his eyes against the light. “You know him?”
The man nodded.
“Who is he?”
The old man did not answer and the captain raised his voice, “Who is this man?”
“They’ve murdered Monsieur Calais,” the man replied softly, and with his gnarled hand, he crossed himself.


2: Twelve bore
           
The Mercedes pulled off the track and the driver opened the rear door. The procureur rose with difficulty from the seat.
The procureur could have passed for a white man, despite the short curly hair, now turning white. His skin was pale. He was overweight and he had to exert himself to get onto his feet. He was wearing a white shirt and a pair of pale blue slacks. His tennis shoes appeared exceptionally small.
The onlookers had come from the neighboring hamlets, on bicycles and mobylettes, or in battered Peugeot and Toyota pickups. There were several women, squat on their rubber sandals and shapeless beneath cotton dresses. One held a child to her chest.
Barriers had been put up and a gendarme held the crowd back.
Uniformed men and civilians moved within the radius of the converging floodlights.
The corpse lay beneath a dark blanket.
A van stood near the pond. Nearby, two men were talking. Commandant Lebel looked up and, noticing the crowd of onlookers draw apart, rose to his feet and saluted briskly.
The procureur was out of breath. He took a small cigar from his mouth. “This Calais?”
Commandant Lebel nodded. He bent over and lifted the edge of the blanket. The procureur squinted, smoke in his eyes. He looked down on the face, now grey in death. “Poor bastard.”
“You knew him, monsieur le procureur?”
“Who didn’t know Calais?” Slowly the procureur turned on his small feet and looked at the stationary vehicles, the Jeeps and the Saviem van.
“Everything in order?”
Lebel let the blanket fall back on the dead face, “Everything in order, monsieur le procureur.”
“I’ll be needing an autopsy.” He paused, looking at Lebel thoughtfully. “Gun wounds?”
“We’ve found the cartridge—twelve bore.”
“Fingerprints?”
Lebel shook his head. “The cartridge had been trampled in the mud.”
“When did he die?”
“The corpse must’ve been in the water for at least eighteen hours.”
The procureur took a small packet of Déchets de Havane cigars from his pocket. “Twelve bore?” He lit another cigar with the burning stub.
“We’ve located the culprit.”
“Fast work, Lebel.” The procureur raised an eyebrow. “My congratulations.”
“We need permission for a search warrant—and to bring the man in for questioning.”
“Who?”
“An old man. A revenge killing.”
“You’re sure?”
“The man spent most of his life in French Guyana—in the penal colony. An ex-convict.”
“How do you know he’s guilty?”
“He’d been making threats against Calais.”
The...

„Über diesen Titel“ kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Verlag
Soho Crime
Erscheinungsdatum
2014
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1616953632
ISBN 13 
9781616953638
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
352
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Soho Press
https://sohopress.com/the-best-of-soho-press-2021/

4 rue Fernand Laguide
Corbeil Essonnes
Ile de France
91100
Frankreich