Alex (Verhœven series)
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Cover of Alex
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| Author | Pierre Lemaitre |
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| Original title | Alex |
| Translator | Frank Wayne |
| Country | France |
| Language | English |
| Series | Verhœven series |
| Genre | Crime fiction |
| Publisher | MacLehose Press |
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Publication date
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1 August 2013 |
| Media type | Print (hardcover) |
| Pages | 496 |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 1782060790 |
| Preceded by | Irene |
| Followed by | Camille |
Alex (Camille Verhœven Trilogy #2) is a crime novel written by French novelist Pierre Lemaitre. The novel, though originally published in French in 2011, came to be translated to English by Frank Wynne in 2013. Despite being Pierre Lemaitre's 2nd novel, by publication order, in the original Camille Verhœven series, it is the first novel to be translated in English.
The novel became a huge success due to its gripping story line and set precedent for English translations of other subsequent novels in the same series. Highlighting its popularity and significance among translated crime novels, it was compared to Swedish author Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy book The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
It won the CWA International Dagger award 2013 amidst much international acclaim.
Alex Prevost – kidnapped, savagely beaten, suspended from the ceiling of an abandoned warehouse in a wooden cage – is running out of time. Her abductor appears to want only to watch her die. Apart from a shaky eyewitness report, Police Commandant Camille Verhœven has nothing to go on: no suspects, no leads.
To find the young woman, the detective - a man with a tragic past and extraordinary abilities as an investigator - must first understand more about her.
Part I
The plot is thrown open with the abduction of a 30 year old beautiful woman, Alex Prevost with an unreliable eyewitness who identifies 'a white van' as the abduction vehicle. Citing similarities to his wife's abduction and murder a couple of years ago, Police Commandant Camille Verhœven reluctantly accepts the case. The futile interrogation at the crime scene yields no leads and he sends an indecipherable sliver of nameplate (of the van) caught on a CCTV camera to the forensics' team.
The kidnapper places Alex, unclad, in a wooden cage and leaves it hanging off the ground in a defunct mill. He supplies her with dog food and water and abandons her, to return briefly, to click her snaps on his phone.
The van is traced to belong to 53 year old John-Pierre Trarieux. Upon recognizing the ambush set up by the police at his home, Trarieux makes a narrow escape and drives off to downtown Paris only to be cornered on a bridge. Trarieux jumps off the bridge to his death instead of surrendering. Verhœven finds Alex's pictures on his phone and another picture (in print) of Trariuex's son Pascal posing with another girl. They think of a possible link between Pascal's disappearance and Alex's kidnapping and interrogate the people with whom Trarieux had established communication prior to the abduction. This leads them to Sandrine - Alex's former roommate who identifies the girl with Pascal as Nathalie (a false name assumed by Alex) - and discover Pascal's body buried in her backyard under a water harvesting project which had been abruptly implemented by Nathalie before her untimely departure. Pascal's body had been scoured by sulphuric acid and Camille recollects two other deaths with a similar Modus operandi and postulates that Nathalie/Alex could have been a serial murderer.
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