Sans rien ni personne [Book Review]

SPOILERS

It's been a while since I've posted about a French book, mainly because I've been slowly slogging through Québec author Marie Laberge's 434-page Sans rien ni personne ("Without Anything or Anyone"). It's a cold case mystery novel with a decent hook: in 1972, a young woman was murdered shortly after delivering a stillborn baby. Twenty-five years later, a detective from France arrives in Québec to assist local police in solving the case. One of the themes of the book is the cultural difference between French and Québecois detectives, with the French detective chain-smoking, sleeping with witnesses, and pursuing intuitive leads, while his partner is a more by-the-book sort. Anyway, it's all for nought as this is a talky, talky book that is quite slow to develop. The detectives don't get a good lead until about halfway through the book, it turns out the killer has actually been dead for years, and the "big twist" is mostly foreseeable. Good mystery novels don't need car chases and explosions, but they do need an intriguing plot that moves forward at a decent pace.