From the author of the Man Booker short-listed His Bloody Project.
Manfred Baumann is a loner. Socially awkward and perpetually ill at
ease, he spends his evenings quietly drinking and surreptitiously
observing Adèle Bedeau, the sullen but alluring waitress at a drab
bistro in the unremarkable small French town of Saint-Louis. But one
day, she simply vanishes into thin air.
When Georges Gorski, a detective haunted by his failure to solve one of
his first murder cases, is called in to investigate the girl's
disappearance, Manfred's repressed world is shaken to its core, and he
is forced to confront the dark secrets of his past.
The Disappearance of Adèle Bedeau is a literary mystery novel that is,
at heart, an engrossing psychological portrayal of an outsider pushed to
the limit by his own feverish imagination.