Author:Fred Vargas,Siân Reynolds
The opera singer Sophia Siméonidis wakes up one morning to discover that a tree has appeared overnight in the garden of her Paris house. Intrigued and unnerved, she turns to her neighbours: Vandoosler, an ex-cop, and three impecunious historians, Mathias, Marc and Lucien - the three evangelists. They agree to dig around the tree and see if something has been buried there. They find nothing but soil.
A few weeks later, Sophia disappears and her body is found burned to ashes in a car. Who killed the opera singer? Her husband, her ex-lover, her best friend, her niece? They all seem to have a motive.
Vandoosler and the three evangelists set out to find the truth.
The Three Evangelists is a strange mix of the sinister, the bizarre and the surreal; her characters seldom behave like ordinary people, and her mysteries do not follow the usual rules of crime fiction. Yet these curiously assembled elements coalesce into a gripping, unsettling whole that stays in the mind far longer than most novels of the genre. It tantalises from page one
—— Marcel Berlins , The TimesA Vargas novel is as good as a trip to Paris. The style has the same hyper-real quality as all her writing - the real world, but filtered through a strange prism - but it's the plotting that really hits the spot: ingenious and eccentric
—— Barry Forshaw , Daily ExpressA truly original talent, creating situations and characters like nothing else in contemporary crime fiction... This novel is a delight, written in a wonderfully wry tone of voice, and its plot twists will defy the most alert reader
—— Joan Taylor , Sunday TimesOne of France's most original crime writers... her characters are eccentric but appealing and the mystery is enjoyably hard to solve
—— Sunday TelegraphOriginal...plenty to enjoy
—— Times Literary SupplementForsyth's tale of intrigue and bravery hooks the listener from the start.
—— Waterstones Books QuarterlyWedding a superb command of detail to a story of pace and power, Forsyth has written a counterterrorism primer-thriller of chilling relevance
—— The ObserverMasterly
—— Financial Times... Totally absorbing ... a highly recommended read.
—— Irish Independent... Brilliantly executed and full of significant popular allusion and Irish attitude.
—— Western Daily PressBruen's tightly coiled prose strikes like a piss-soaked rattler.
—— CapitalSharp, punch and unsettling, Priest is a masterpiece.
—— Peterborough Evening Telegraph... An intensely dark maelstrom ... excellent.
—— www.marymartin.com.auBruen should be valued as one of the most challenging and memorable writers in the genre at the moment.
—— www.reviewingtheevidence.com