Xavier-Marie Bonnot
Translator Ian Monk
'Set in the vast, mysterious spaces of the Camargue, where a man can stand and 'observe hordes of creatures that were unknown to him' ... this is a sophisticated mystery and a character study of the detective' Times Literary Supplement.
'The marshes are crawling with life - and with fear... This is a sophisticated mystery' Literary Review.
'Cut from the same cloth as Ian Rankin's John Rebus and Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch' Jeff Glorfeld, Melbourne Age.
For centuries the ceremonial order of the Knights of the Tarasque have met to bear the effigy of a mythical beast through the Provencal town of Tarascon. But one summer's night the ceremony is disrupted by a gruesome discovery: a mutilated body found at the feet of the effigy, apparently torn apart by enormous teeth and claws. Could it be that the monster of legend is more than just myth?
The case draws an unwilling Michel de Palma, called 'the Baron' by his colleagues in the Marseille murder squad, into the dark heart of Provence, where mythology is part of everyday life. As more dismembered corpses appear, de Palma falls into a world coloured by murky financial intrigues and the tortured history of post-occupation France. It is a world where de Palma's uninvited investigations could soon see him in mortal danger.
Xavier-Marie Bonnot has a PhD in History and Sociology, and two Masters degrees in History and French Literature. The Beast of the Camargue is the second of the De Palma investigations, following The First Fingerprint. The Beast of the Camargue won the 2004 Roman Policier Award. Ian Monk is the award-winning translator of the Daniel Pennac Belleville Quintet and a member of Oulipo.
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