The Accident on the A35 is the second book in the Georges Gorski series by award-winning Scottish author, Graeme Macrae Burnet. It looked pretty straightforward: Bertrand Bethelme’s Mercedes had run off the A35 into a tree, sometime after 9pm on Tuesday night. He probably fell asleep at the wheel. But after confirming his identity the following morning, his widow, Lucette raised a query: where had her husband been that night? His usual Tuesday night dinner with his club would not put him anywhere near the A35. One more thing: the metafictional nods in the introduction and epilogue work very nicely this time; I was less keen on them with the previous novel but this time they add an entirely new dimension to the reading of this book. I can't and won't say why, but all becomes very clear.

Colyton also set about making the car and lorry involved safe so neither vehicle posed a further danger to our crews.”

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This is on the face of it a crime novel, but the quality of the writing, the depth of the characterisation, the creation of place and time and the intelligence of the game the author plays with the reader all raise it so that it sits easily into the literary fiction category, in my opinion at the highest level. As with Adele Budeau, we learn in the Forward (and more in the Afterword) that this detective story was actually one of two outstanding manuscripts by the “acclaimed” (fictional) author, Raymond Brunet, delivered to the publisher on the day of his mother’s death. Brunet had died years earlier in a suicide, which leaves the reader wondering why these manuscripts weren’t sent until this very day. Burnet is such a tease with his crafty meta-fiction! This is a subtle book about a man living a hidden life and what transpires after his death. The reader must not mind that a crime isn’t solved or is it that there was no crime at all? They said: “We would like to take this opportunity to praise the actions of those members of the public who swiftly ran to assist with first aid and immediate traffic control. The Audi driver recalled: “I started braking from the minute I saw her leaning from the left (...) because she was on my side of the road. The bike wasn’t straight out, she came out in a diagonal angle”.

While any follow up is unnecessary, as Chief Inspector, Gorski decides he will make some enquiries for the attractive young widow. And the inconsistencies he uncovers, coupled with a puzzling reticence displayed by the dead man’s colleagues and friends soon has Gorski intrigued, and determined to find out just what’s been going on. Meanwhile, Raymond Bethelme, the accident victim’s 17-year-old son, is conducting a sort of enquiry of his own, based on a scrap of paper found in his father’s desk drawer. The mystery at the centre of the book is fairly straightforward. A lawyer, Bertrand Barthelme, in a small French town is killed in what looks an accident late at night but on a road he shouldn't be on if he was where he told his wife. When Chief Inspector Georges Gorski informs the man's young and attractive wife of his death, she asks him to find out where her husband had been that night. Bertrand's 17 year old son, Raymond decides to carry out his own investigation into his father's movements that night.Both the A303 and A358 were closed to allow enquiries to take place but reopened yesterday afternoon. We want to thank residents for their patience. As part of the investigation, we want to hear from anyone who was travelling along this stretch of road in either direction at approximately 4.15am yesterday.

Over the past year I’ve become an aficionado of Grame Macrae Burnet after becoming entranced with his Booker-nominated novel, His Bloody Project. That was followed by reading The Disappearance of Adele Bedeau, and now I’ve dipped into the well for the third time with his thoroughly absorbing The Accident on A35. In conclusion I was impressed by Graeme Macrea Burnet's skills as a writer and reading this novel has reinforced the high opinion I formed of him when reading His Bloody Project; he has intrigued and inspired me to read The Disappearance of Adele Bedeau. Once again, Graeme Macrae Burnet comes up with a clever conceit based around the discovery of a decades-old manuscript in the slush pile of a Parisian publishing house. The story in this book is Macrae Burnet’s ‘translation’ and is every bit as brilliant a concept as the Booker-nominated His Bloody Project. Indeed, all the better, in my view, for being a far more subtle take on subterfuge. Here, the author succeeds in authentically replicating the slightly formal, ever so slightly stilted language of a French-to-English translation. This is handled in such a convincing manner that it becomes a totally credible construct and to me it is the very finest thing about this very fine literary crime novel.What bugs me is I can’t find his two other books in my library. That bugs me when 1) I can’t remember if I gave books away (and as best my feeble brain can recall I did not), and 2) if I did not give them away where in the hell are they? 😟 A man in his 70s is believed to have fallen before a collision with a van. Paramedics attended but sadly the man was pronounced dead at the scene. The emergency services were called to the A35 Abbey Gate junction near Axminster on Thursday afternoon (July 20) after reports a heavy goods lorry was involved in a crash with a Citroen car. Both protagonists, on a similar quest - to find answers about Barthelme's life - spend a lot of time getting soused. They approach things from odd angles, making this book funny, sad, and even silly at times. According to the afterward, written by the translator, Graeme Macrae Burnet, much of the narrative is a reflection of the author's own life. However, while much of the book may have had a basis in reality, it strikes me as a definite work of fiction. As Sartre said, a novel is "neither true nor false".