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They find the boy by the swimming pool, dolls floating on its surface...Inside the house, his teacher lies dead...But he claims to remember nothing...
June 2010. In the middle of a World Cup match, Martin Servaz receives a call from a long-lost lover. A few miles away in the town of Marsac, Classics professor Claire Diemar has been brutally murdered.
As if that weren't disturbing enough, Servaz receives a cryptic e-mail indicating that Julian Hirtmann, the most twisted of all serial killers, is back…and hitting a little too close to home. With death and chaos surrounding the small university town in Southern France where he was once a student and where his daughter is now enrolled, Servaz must act quickly.
With the help of detectives Irene Ziegler and Esperandieu, Servaz will have to uncover a world of betrayal and depravity to connect the dots between these gruesome murders that keep re-opening wounds from his past. After the success of The Frozen Dead, Bernard Minier plunges readers once again into a perfectly constructed, dark and oppressive atmosphere, driven foreward by a gripping plot, pushing the limits of the genre.
"Starred Review. The Russian nesting doll of a plot is perfectly executed and delivers two genuine gut punches at the end." - Publisher's Weekly
"Starred Review. Minier delivers yet another absorbing thriller that will keep readers guessing until the final shocking pages. Set in southern France, this satisfying read will entice fans of dark, gritty Scandinavian thrillers who will find Martin Servaz reminiscent of Jo Nesbø's Harry Hole." - Library Journal
"The Frozen Dead has been listed as one of the 50 best crime novels of the past five years, and its sequel deserves to join it. The sense of creeping dread is viciously sharp and painful in both." - The Daily Mail (UK)
"Intense and intellectual, Commandant Servaz revisits his past amours in a Pyrenees university town in this clever atmospheric thriller. A gripping read." - The Times, (UK)
"Crime Book of the Month. Over the past few years , France has produced some of Europe's most striking and original crime novelists. Bernard Minier is up there with the best and has just published a second novel quite as good as his sensational debut, The Frozen Dead." - The Sunday Times (UK)
"You'll find you cannot stop imbibing this vintage crime thriller." - The Daily Express (UK)
This information about The Circle was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Bernard Minier grew up in the foothills of the French Pyrenees. He had a career as a customs official before publishing his first novel, The Frozen Dead, in 2011. The novel has been translated into a dozen languages and has garnered critical acclaim as well as several literary prizes in France. Minier lives in the Essonne, south of Paris.
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