Is it really Super in Cannes?

Ever dreamt of emigrating to France? In the U.K. it seems like it is a dream that  most people entertain every once in a while. Paris is just on the other side of the Channel and if you then drive south for a few hours, you'll be in the beautiful Provencal countryside where a smell of lavender is in the air and where all the women are gorgeous in that French way. At least that seems to be the perception and it definitely is the vision that Paul and his wife Jane from J. G. Ballard's novel "Super-Cannes" have when they up sticks and move to Cannes.

Jane is a 27-year-old doctor who married Paul, an older man and a pilot, while he was in the hospital after a nasty flying accident. When she is offered a role as a resident doctor at the prestigious Eden-Olympia business park just outside Cannes, it seems like the opportunity of a lifetime. Leaving a grey, miserable London behind and pursuing the possibilities that a great laboratory and lots of funding will provide. Paul, the protagonist of the story, is happy to tag along. He is head over heels in love with his teenage doctor, as he calls her, and he is still recovering from the accident and is hoping that the sun and the lazy days by the poolside will do him good.
As they settle into the pace of life at Eden-Olympia, a modern piece of paradise where all you need is inside the gates, Paul starts to become restless. In his restlessness he begins to ask questions - what happened to the doctor who previously held Jane's position? Why did he suddenly (?) snap and murder ten people in a shooting spree? And were they victims chosen at random or were they carefully selected?
Early on it becomes clear that there is more lurking beneath the surface of paradise than visible to the naked eye but what it is and how it will impact the lives of Jane and Paul remains hidden until the last pages of this thrilling novel.

"Super-Cannes" is exceptionally well-written. If you are one of those people who like mystery or thriller novels but hate the fact that the majority of them are thrash, written by people who are not exactly good at writing... then "Super-Cannes" will be for you. It is so subtle and elegant, yet despite the sunkissed setting, it sent shivers down my spine. It is so scary and the reality that Paul is trying to navigate is so distorted that he loses sight of everything but the mystery.

Read it if: You like stories about what happens behind the facade. If you like a well-written psychological thriller.

Review: "Into The Darkest Corner" by Elizabeth Haynes

Some books are unputdownable. Not many. A few. This one is one of them. It is an absolutely gripping story and from the very first page I was hooked and kept on reading to find out more. It is a story about domestic abuse and the awful consequences that it can have, how life is never the same again. Genre-wise it is somewhere between a mental disorder novel and a psychological thriller but mostly it is the last one. 


Catherine spends her life catering to the Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder that is keeping her from living. By all means, she is surviving but living she is not. Every day she triple checks (or more) the locks on her door, her windows, the front door. If she fails to check it correctly, she has to do it all over again. And sometimes her world falls apart and she descends into a full-scale panic attack. The descriptions of living with OCD are scary in their truth, the way the disorder drives her life and dictates every little action. For a long time Catherine has been living alone with her disorder, not telling anyone about it though some are bound to have guessed it. Then a  new neighbour moves in, a psychologist, and he recognizes her symptoms and offers her a friendly shoulder to lean on and advice on how to get help. 


So far so good. 


The story is told in two tracks - one is set in 2008 and one in 2004. The Catherine in the 2004 story is a very different young woman. Outgoing, vivacious and full of life, she lives life as a single girl to the max - partying and having fun. Then she meets the gorgeous Lee who is very keen on going from date to full-on boyfriend and within months of their initial meeting, they are to all intents and purposes living together. However, something is not quite right. Lee is sometimes gone for days, working a job that he is very secretive about and sometimes Catherine gets the feeling that he is watching her, keeping tabs on her. 
Then one day he hits her for the first time and from then on the relationship becomes more and more violent until the day he almost kills her.... 


In 2008, Lee is a serving a three-year long prison sentence for the violence he inflicted on Catherine while she is serving a life-sentence in the prison that is OCD, worrying about the day when Lee will be released. 


This is a really really difficult book to read because it isn't (as so many psychological thrillers and crime fiction novels) something far off. This could happen to your or to your friends. Domestic abuse is an underreported crime that still smacks of taboo and I take my hat off to Haynes for having written such a strong novel about it. The description of the isolation that Lee manages to put Catherine in is what scared me the most - again because it was so incredibly believable. His psychopathic personality charms her friends into thinking that she is the one with the problem and thus he gets space, peace and quiet to beat her and treat her just as he wishes. 


Well-written, well put together with lots of page-turning moment and a good pace, this is the perfect read for a lazy weekend or to bring with you on holiday. 

Read it if: You are a fan of believable psyhcological thrillers. You prefer your crime fiction well-written and clever. You want to read a truthful representation of life with OCD.