Alex (The Camille Verhoeven Trilogy) - Softcover

An Amazon Best Book of the Month, September 2013: A young woman has been kidnapped and the clock is ticking on her very life, but before persistent detective Camille Verhoeven can save her, he has to figure out who she is. We, meanwhile, know exactly where she is: squeezed into a tiny wooden cage, being starved and brutally tortured both physically and psychologically. But why? It's through Verhoeven's investigation that we find our answers. This three-act crime thriller is the second book in what is known overseas as "The Commandant Camille Verhoeven Trilogy," but it is the first to be translated from French to English. From the first page, it's gut-wrenchingly graphic, emotionally exhausting, and almost impossible to put down until the end. --Robin A. Rothman

Pierre Lemaitre has worked for many years as a teacher of literature. His novels to date have earned him exceptional critical and public acclaim as a master of the crime novel and have won him the Prix du Premier Roman de Cognac 2006, the Prix du Meilleur Polar Francophone 2009, and the Prix du Polar Europeen du Point 2010. Alex is his first novel to be translated into English, and won the presitigious 2013 Crime Writers Association International Dagger Award. In 2013 Lemaitre was the recipient of the prestigious Prix Goncourt, the highest literary honor in France, for Au revoir la-haut.

Frank Wynne has translated works by Michel Houellebecq, Boualem Sansal, and many more. He won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2005 for his translation of Frederic Beigbeder's Windows on the World.

From the Hardcover edition.