1900. On the heights of Algiers la blanche, the Wandell family home has just been the scene of a massacre. Six murders: masters and servants. There is every reason to believe that two convicts, working there after being released from the penal colony, were looking for a way to escape. Lieutenant Julien Koestler, in charge of the case, sets out to find them through the teeming crowds of Algiers. But the investigator must navigate a city that, echoing the Dreyfus affair, trembles under the pressure of anti-Semitism dividing the population from the French colonists.
Not to mention a series of robberies suffered by bank employees while on duty. And shouldn’t we also try to find out more about the appalling colonial expedition to Black Africa that involved the Wandell family a few months earlier?
In this new detective novel, Gwenaël Bulteau once again takes us on a suspenseful investigation full of twists and turns. With his customary talent for capturing people and times, he takes us back to the heart of those troubled and furious hours under the African sun.
