Ex-journalist Grangé’s Blood Red Rivers was swiftly made into a French blockbuster starring Jean Reno, (the Bruce Willis of France - give or take the odd Raul Ruiz and Antonioni movie). A dubbed version even made it for a few days into my local multi-plex. But the inexorable logic of the blockbuster is that you must top that which went before. In Blood Red Rivers he created a French Alpine university set on creating a new master race. His rigorously plotted new thriller takes us firmly into paranormal territory, not to mention the more far-flung reaches of the Mongolian steppes, and uncovers an attempt by modern science to harness the stranger powers of the human mind and body.
Ethologist Diane Thiberge (look it up!), Shaolin boxer, single, sexually frigid, adopts a son from an orphanage close to the Burmese-Thailand border - –and names him Lucien, from the two syllables he continually utters, ‘Lu’ and ‘Sian’. Then, still revelling in her surrogate motherhood, she is involved in a horrific (and suspicious) motorway accident which leaves Lucien close to death. Conventional medicine fails to prevent deterioration, but a mysterious doctor induces recovery, using acupuncture. Lucien’s saviour, who is unknown to the staff, is later found in the hospital cold-store, killed in most unconventional manner. What is it about Lucien that has provoked this extraordinary conflict? Diane’s investigations will take her far beyond her native France...
Diane is a credible heroine, the growing bond between herself and Lucien persuasively portrayed. Grangé continually pushes the action along, even managing to incorporate the necessary scientific and medical background without loss of pace. Even later when the book shifts to a convincing Mongolia (Grangé worked there as a journalist) and spirals to take in psychokinesis, shamanism and early experiments in nuclear fusion, credibility (if not realism) is successfully maintained. Credibility is, in fact, more at risk from a reliance on coincidence as a plot mechanism to keep the pace from flagging.
Along the way Grangé manages some splendid set pieces. There’s one I would particularly like to see rendered on film–a shoot-out in a Mondrian exhibition, Diane using the colours of the compositions to confuse the electronic sights on the guns of her would-be assassins. Poor climax though. This reader was left with a distinct feeling of “"Is that it?”"
Really, it’s all pretty preposterous– but it’s great fun. And, your reviewer adds wistfully, Diane would have been a lovely role for Isabelle Huppert ( well, maybe about ten years ago...).