Frédéric Andrei

L’homme assis au carrefour de Chabottes

October 2, 2025
Noir Fiction
448 pages
21,90 €
9782385532437
978-2-3855-3243-7
																Frédéric Andrei, L’homme assis au carrefour de Chabottes
																Frédéric Andrei, L’homme assis au carrefour de Chabottes

Loïc Payan is an electrician. He lives in a small mountain village with his wife. He is always in her shadow. So when a woman is found dead at his station, her body stabbed multiple times, he becomes fascinated by the case. He joins a community of sleuths. These men and women work on cold cases that the police are unable to solve. Loïc decides to play hardball, even if it means losing everything and ending up in a hospital bed. A young trainee police officer, Chloé Gutman, is tasked with recording his testimony. In this male-dominated world, she quickly realizes that no one wants to reveal anything to her about the details of this investigation, which seems to be beyond the French authorities’ capabilities. What did Loïc Payan do? What has he touched? And where is his wife, whom he keeps asking about? The interrogation can begin.

With this novel, Frédéric Andrei offers us a dizzying face-to-face encounter at the heart of an endless quest for passion and competition. In a connected world where secrets no longer exist, is it possible for a mystery to persist?

The author

Frédéric Andrei began his career as an actor and, while continuing to perform in theater and cinema, moved on to directing feature films for cinema and documentaries for television. Also a novelist, he published his first novel, Riches à en mourir, in 2014 with Albin Michel, which was shortlisted for the Quais du Polar/20 Minutes prize. He followed this with Bad Land in 2016 and L’Histoire de la reine des putes in 2020, both with the same publisher.

Highlights

A detective novel about a little-known amateur practice: sleuthering, or online amateur investigators.

A remarkable literary construct: interrogation as a means of revisiting past events.

A troubled main character: forgotten genius or simplistic megalomaniac?

October 2, 2025
Noir Fiction
448 pages
21,90 €
9782385532437
978-2-3855-3243-7