Crime scene

In Crime Scene , Nobel Prize winner Patrick Modiano explores the enigmas of time and memory in a disturbing novel.

The period of fleeting memories and dark events chronicled by Patrick Modiano in his three acclaimed semi-autobiographical novels— "Spring of a Dog ," "Remission of Sentence ," and "Flowers of Ruin "—is revisited in "Crime Scene ." The Nobel Prize-winning author revisits the places and events of his childhood on the rue du Docteur-Kurzenne, a time marked by surrogate mothers, mysterious events, and an infamous robbery never solved by the police.

In this book, Modiano evokes the unfolding of those years. Jean Bosmans, now in his early twenties, finds himself caught in a series of disturbing coincidences involving an elusive woman, the house where he spent part of his childhood, and a group of characters who seem excessively interested in his past, for reasons he cannot fathom. As he traverses the echoes of memory, past and present become increasingly intertwined, forming a web spanning half a century of his life.

With the suspense of a detective novel, Crime Scene slowly peels back the layers of time and oblivion to reveal the terrifying, threatening, and tragic legacies of what we think we know about our own lives.

"Modiano, with his writing full of elisions and silent pauses, is a master of creating atmosphere. His Paris is incandescent with a noirish menace, a perfect palimpsest for Bosmans's memoir." - New York Times Book Review