Surface

Police capitaine Noemie Chastain has everything: a coveted position in Paris, a devoted team, and a loving partner. On a dawn raid in a grimy Parisian banlieue, in an instant, she loses it all. Shot by the drug dealer she was about to arrest, she is left with serious scars on her face and deeper, longer-lasting damage to her psyche.

Pushed out of her job in Paris by superiors concerned that her disfigurement would damage team morale, abandoned by her boyfriend, she is posted to a police department that serves six sparsely populated communes in the back of beyond, in the southern department of Aveyron. Her brief: to report back on the police department and give head office an excuse to close it altogether.

But when the body of a child floats to the surface of the man-made lake that hides the buried past of the village of Avalone, Capitaine Chastain is forced to take the opportunity to prove her worth and win back her job in Paris. To solve the case, she must lead a team more used to tracking down stolen combine harvesters – handsome Lieutenant Valant, the mayor's son; ex-Drug Squad Brigadier Bousquet; and green local boy 'Bambi' – through the twists and turns of what has become a murder investigation and uncover the dark secrets that have haunted the village for twenty years.

Tightly plotted and dark, with complex characters... ex-police officer Olivier Norek proves once again his mastery of the genre. – Abel Mestre, Le Monde

Olivier Norek returns with a classic police procedural which aims to hold the reader in suspense from the first page to the last – and succeeds magnificently. – Alexandra Schwartzbrod, Libération

Spectacular from start to finish. – Claire Julliard, Nouvel Obs

In every Norek novel, we find an extremely well-documented investigation, masterfully resolved, and a plot that leaves the reader without a second to catch their breath. – Sandrine Bajos, Parisien