Daniel Duval, lieutenant enquêteur de la SQ
(Daniel Duval, SQ detective)
 Illustration : Jacques Lamontagne |
June 1976... The entire province of Quebec has been hit by a terrible heat wave, and the Olympic Games are just around the corner. But in Sainte-Foy, in the suburbs of Quebec City, the Old Capital, H doesn't care about the heat or the Games. Just out of jail, he's lost the new job, which was supposed to help him reintegrate into society. Somebody will have to pay for this latest failure ! Daniel Duval is an investigator with the Quebec provincial police. When he returns from running a marathon, he has to deal with a difficult case : a psychopath who gets his fun shooting drivers on Duplessis Boulevard. With his partner Louis Harel, Duval desperately tries to catch the mad shooter in order to prevent more gratuitous murders. But the two police officers know nothing about H's morbid passion for demolition derbies... or that he is determined to take out a cop. |
| Jacques
Côté Nébulosité croissante en fin de journée (Increasing cloud clover at the end of the day) 365 pages, $14.95 |
 Illustration : Bernard Duchesne |
October 1979... In Quebec City, a series of events is spreading panic : a bloody message was written on a wall in the underground corridors of Université Laval ; a dog was horribly mutilated ; a hand was found stuck on a picket fence at Collège Jésus-Marie, with a piece of paper wrapped around one finger, and the words My decomposed loves. Daniel Duval, a Quebec police lieutenant, is investigating with the help, for the first time since the Hurtubise case, of his partner Louis Harel. Harel is now confined to a wheelchair. But as the detectives follow every possible lead and the forensics
experts try to garner information from the tiniest clue, the
worst fears of Duval and his partner are confirmed when a young
woman is horribly murdered in the Sillery cemetery : a mad
killer is on the loose in the city and everything indicates that
the violence of his acts will continue to escalate ! |
| Jacques
Côté Le Rouge idéal (Ideal Red) 429 pages, $15.95 |
 Illustration : Bernard Duchesne |
May 1980... Lieutenant Duval and his team are assigned a difficult task : finding who poisoned Florence, the well-known wife of Charles Marquis, a rich entrepreneur who wants to become mayor of Quebec City. Only after the body has been exhumed and tested for toxins - the death took place in October 1979 - was it discovered that what killed this woman, whom everyone considered a saint, and which made her die in horrible pain, was not her cancer or the chemotherapy. As the investigation progresses, Duval finds that the list
of suspects keeps getting longer. Of course, the big inheritance
is certainly one possible motive. The fact that Florence was
discreetly trying to get a divorce must not be ignored either.
But when Duval finds out that Charles had discovered his homosexuality
a few years before and is still in a tempestuous relationship
with a beautiful young man, he realizes that his investigation
has just taken an altogether unexpected turn !
(Meilleur polar québécois) Best Detective Novel |
| Jacques
Côté La Rive noire (The Dark Shore) 367 pages, $14.95 |
