Time Is a Killer

February 12, 2018
In this gripping noir from Bussi (After the Crash), Clotilde, husband Franck, and their 15-year-old daughter, Valentine, take a vacation in Corsica, where, 27 years earlier, Clotilde survived a car crash that killed her mother, father, and only brother. When she revisits the scene and makes overtures to reconnect with her Corsican grandparents, Clotilde receives a freshly written letter in what appears to be her mother’s handwriting that triggers a spate of questions about her family’s fate. The dizzying spiral of recall and disconcerting events related to the crash are set off by entries from 15-year-old Clotilde’s diary from 1989, charting a narrative of teenage hormones, marital friction, and island politics that peaks with a devastating discovery of parental betrayal that led to the fatal crash. The climactic sequence, on the same fateful stretch of road, is a fine payoff. Bussi takes his time, maybe too much time, setting the stage and ratcheting up the tension between past and present, but manages to resolve most of the tangled relationships while keeping the reader intrigued.

February 1, 2018
Returning to the scene of a family tragedy, a woman confronts secrets and murder.Twenty-seven years after her parents and brother died in a horrible car accident that she survived, Clotilde returns to Corsica for the first time, bringing her husband and daughter to visit her paternal grandparents, who are still a wealthy and powerful force on the island. Just after she arrives, someone sends her a mysterious note--written in her dead mother's handwriting. As she begins to wonder whether the car crash was truly an accident, and whether there could have been any way her mother survived, someone else is also reliving that long-ago summer by reading Clotilde's teenage diary and dreaming of revenge. The sins of the past, of course, are not buried or forgotten, and adult Clotilde must discover the connection among her parents' relationship; a half-paralyzed man; the abandoned plan to build a dolphin sanctuary; a dog named Pacha; and the reappearance of an Italian beauty who had been seducing her brother that fateful summer. There are a lot of moving parts in Bussi's (Blackwater Lilies, 2017, etc.) novel, a lot of switching from past to present, but as the complexity mounts, the novel gets more and more engaging. It takes a while to get a true sense of Clotilde as an adult compared to her vivid 15-year-old self, but her self-awareness and confidence make her an appealing and strong character. The mystery surprises, and the backdrop of Corsica lends the novel an exotic air while also exposing the way that tradition is fading in such small communities.A well-constructed literary thriller with a strong sense of place and deep understanding of human nature.

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March 15, 2018
Twenty-seven years after the tragic car crash that killed her family, Clotilde visits the scene of the accident in Corsica for the first time. With her husband, Franck, and 15-year-old daughter, Valentine, she surveys the scene where her father, scion of the powerful Corsican Idrissi family, failed to turn on a treacherous mountain road and went off a cliff, killing himself, Clotilde's mother, and her older brother, Nicolas, and leaving only 15-year-old Clotilde surviving. Now a lawyer, she seeks information about the 1989 incident, particularly after she receives notes written in her mother's hand. At the same time, someone unknown to her is reading Clotilde's journal from the summer of 1989, which she lost after the crash, and is determined to keep the truth hidden. As the narrative toggles between the present and the journal entries, Clotilde tracks down friends from 1989 and renews her relationship with now-married Natale Angeli, the dolphin master 10 years her senior whom she loved in her teens. In beautiful language, best-selling French author Bussi (After the Crash, 2016) constructs an engrossing, multilayered tale of family, love, and death.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)