«Nora», a detective story in the heart of Lucerne

Tuesday's Letters from French-Speaking Switzerland – Jonas Follonier

Driven by a female writing style that focuses heavily on the characters' emotions, Nora is a crime novel that has just been published by Editions Slatkine. Its author, Louise Anne Bouchard, plunges us into the heart of a mystery centered on the death of a man named Paul Mutter in Lucerne. A journalist and a former police officer lead the investigation, and soon an earlier death takes center stage in the story: that of a woman named Nora.

Something was completely clouding my mind. I thought that after all this time spent in Lucerne, it was highly unlikely that my will to live would return elsewhere unless I got to the bottom of this story. Perhaps it was the beginning of a slow, creeping death, a permanent sorrow so heavy that I couldn’t imagine ever being able to shake it off. Every cobblestone in this city, every sound, every slab of concrete, every patch of stucco I glimpsed in the windows reminded me of something I had anticipated.

The plot, considering both the novel’s starting point and its ending, is well thought out. The twists on the final pages are unexpected; in that sense, it’s a successful crime novel. As for the style, while it may at times seem somewhat heavy due to the length of the paragraphs and the complexity of the characters, it showcases a Canadian-Swiss writing style worth discovering and features some beautiful passages worth noting.

«Everything foreign in this city is at once mysterious, alluring, and repulsive.» When it is not the city itself that is described this way, it is the characters, described in the same terms: «His face was not unfamiliar to Helen: it was mysterious and alluring. » This way of creating a dialogue, within the space of a few pages, between Helen’s interlocutor and the environment surrounding them is interesting, especially since the «mysterious and alluring» nature of the unknown (the stranger) is suddenly associated with the known.

Sarah von Pfyffer’s eyes were gleaming; she no longer saw anyone else and seemed to be staring ahead into a television-like universe known only to her. I am still frightened by that monstrous gaze that consumed the entire face of such a beautiful woman.

Louise Anne Bouchard’s novel also contains sociological analyses of the different types of people who inhabit the city of Lucerne. The challenge lies in delving into their private lives while portraying the characteristics of an entire group of people. From the effeminate charlatan to the wealthy, upstart bourgeois woman, and including Jackson, the police officer who was relieved of his duties, we are presented with an entire microcosm—in a pleasant and… Swiss way.

Paul certainly had a playful side: he liked to play, cheat, lie sometimes, rescue a lover and keep her from drowning in a sea of tears, and comfort her. A whole side of his personality had a childlike quality: he was one of those people who know they’ve already lost everything from the start and who, instead of fighting it, just have fun with it.

If you're a fan of crime novels and want to stay up to date on the latest literary news from French-speaking Switzerland, this book might just be for you.

Write to the author : jonas.follonier@leregardlibre.com

Photo credit: © Jonas Follonier for Le Regard Libre