Jean-Marc Cosset is a radiotherapist and a professor at Institut Curie, in Paris. He is the author of Des Rayons contre le cancer (2008).

A small-time crook, Khalid, is found dead in a waste ground in a northern Paris suburb. He had been shot in the head. The same evening, Ludivina, a prostitute working on the northern edge of Paris, succumbs to a similar fate.
Both investigations are assigned to Auguste-Guillaume Soler, a police inspector with 25 years’ experience working on the Paris Criminal Brigade, at 36 Quai des Orfèvres. But then there are more victims: a taxi driver at the Place des Ternes, a student of the prestigious Lycée Montaigne. An initial set of demands is allegedly made by an Islamist group — but these turn out to be unfounded. Then new demands are made: the murders will stop only when the imprisoned head of a deadly sect is freed. And this time the demands are taken seriously. The Criminal Brigade goes to work... but the situation is not as simple as it first appears.


• A mad gunman is on the loose and as the corpses pile up with no apparent connection the tension in Paris builds up — until the final dramatic climax.

• Suspense and surprises await the reader!