Alex

Even though this is ostensibly a place where I review Children's books, as an (almost) adult, I do occasionally need to read the odd adult book to keep me, if not sane, then at least to get the little grey cells working a tiny bit harder.
I love crime novels. At the age of around 11, I made the seamless move from Enid Blyton to Agatha Christie, and to this day I find the intricacies of crime plotting fascinating.
To keep my crime reading up to date, I read Alex by Pierre Lemaitre. Given the author's name you'll be unsurprised to discover that it's a novel translated from French into English and, well, it's pretty darn good.
Alex is one of those novels where you really don't know where it's going until you've got there, and even then it will take you a little while to work out quite how you got there.
Our detective is 4'11'' tall Camille Verhoeven. He's an interesting character, with, unsurprisingly as this is a crime novel and he's a fictional detective, his own demons and quirks. His mother was an artist and he enjoys doodling (my interpretation) all the way through the investigation. He's also traumatised by a personal tragedy, of which I shall say no more, it's not a plot spoiler, but some things you need to discover for yourself.
Which leads us to the case. Alex, the titular character is roughly abducted at the beginning of the book. Her situation is pretty dire, and these opening 10 chapters are rather brutal, she's forced to strip and is suspended in a cage. Oh and there are rats.
I'm not going to say too much else, except there are some huge and extremely impressive plot twists; just when you see where you think the story is going, there's a sudden u-turn which makes you re-evaluate what you have just read and where your sympathies lay. If I say any more then I'll give something away and I really don't want to do that, as I don't think it fair if you are going to read it.
As I said earlier, it's fiction in translation; the translation isn't bad, but it needs a very little effort to keep with it. It's a tiny bit clunky in places, but nothing that is really flawed or that spoilt my enjoyment too much.
If I had to make criticisms, I think the main one would be that it was a little too reserved in places. It will undoubtedly be compared to The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, but Larsson's writing for me is a little more brutal than Lemaitre's so that even though the horrors they write of are equally as vile, Alex just seemed a little more reserved.
Anyhow it's a great book, I'd highly recommend it and though I'd not go quite as far as to say beg, steal or borrow a copy, I do say read it. I think many will really, really enjoy it. I'm looking forward to the next one which is praise enough.