Three Drops of Blood and A Cloud of Cocaine

(Paperback)

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Breaking with many conventions of the genre, the novel holds a satirical mirror to our society by entering the minds of two men at the edge of sanity. Sheriff McCarthy, a church-going family man, is desperately trying to keep some sort of boundary between the sordidness of his investigations and his private life. He is also a man trying to keep faith in human nature and the order that should prevail in the world. But Franck, willing to kill for the sake of a good pun, dominates the story. He is a disturbing, violent, totally decadent character, always over dressed, an actor with too much make-up, a man always rushing to the bathroom for another line of coke, revealing the darker workings of the case with a blood curdling laugh.

Reviews

Mouron makes his English-language debut with a knife-edged noir set in Watertown, Mass., which combines spare prose with a compelling murder mystery plot. Publishers Weekly
Three Drops of Blood and a Cloud of Cocaine is Quentin Mouron's English-language debut, and what a debut it is. Disturbingly violent, yet never gratuitous, it is perfectly balanced with wondrous prose and original one-liners. New York Journal of Books
The game-playing and philosophical aspects are foreshadowed by the Dostoevsky quotes which begin the book, and extensive quotations from a work by Peladan, which Franck is fond of dipping into. In a later passage, Franck speculates about himself as a literary character. All this is likely be a great source of amusement to those who like intellectual jokes, and given the number of ways the reader's expectations are foiled it is all done very well. CrimeReview
Franck is a detective and a half glass empty man. This hedonistic and jaded jeremiad wants a world where people are interesting, authentic, beautiful and original, something that will make his next precious breath worthwhile. Inevitably, the human race disappoints him. Franck being human needs his compensations. The cloud of cocaine referred to in the book title is mainly around Franck. This latest thriller from Bitter Lemon Press is top drawer. The book is original and formidable. CrimeChronicle

Author Bio

Quentin Mouron is a poet and a novelist. He was born in Lausanne in 1989 and is Swiss and Canadian. In 2011 he won the prix Alpes-Jura for his novel Au point d'effusion des egouts . He has written three other highly acclaimed novels before Three Drops of Blood and a Cloud of Cocaine.