A murder takes place in Paris, in a sombre, grey atmosphere reminiscent of the American roman noir. It will result in the collision of two worlds that everything seemed to separate.

Daphne Jenken, wife of the eminent surgeon and transplant specialist Doctor Cassan, is found dead in a seedy hotel frequented by prostitutes, in a working-class neighbourhood of Paris.

Her sister, Diane, determined to discover why Daphne was murdered, enlists the services of Roch Domérégo, a disgraced policeman turned journalist. Their collaboration, at first purely professional, rapidly becomes more intimate. Police Inspector Malika Ketab, a former colleague of Domérégo, is put in charge of the affair, and together all three gradually bring to light the whole frightful, sordid business. Daphne's missing lover, the mysterious Somaly, has no identity, no consistence, and turns out to have been “resuscitated” by Cassan.

It was Cassan, a madman playing God, who transplanted the vital organs of a road-accident victim to create Somaly, because he believed his wife would cheer up in the arms of a lover — a lover entirely at Cassan's mercy.

But when Dr. Cassan realises that Somaly responds to Daphne's love, he commits the irreparable.

In this new thriller, at the crossroads of science fiction and crime fiction, Laura Sadowski revisits some universal themes — the apprentice sorcerer, the demiurge, the “dark face” of science — and pays homage to the classics of gothic literature, particularly to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

Laura Sadowski is a lawyer. Her first novel, L'Affaire Clémence Lange, was published in 2007.