A Fatal Encounter

In May 2002, the French extreme-right leader ousted the Socialist candidate in the second round of the presidential election. This was a warning shot across the nation’s bows.

Five years later, the radical right succeeds in its bid for power, and the birthplace of Voltaire and Victor Hugo has become a police state.

A body is found inside a rubble skip, which spreads waves of panic among officials at the Préfecture de police of Paris, the very heart of the capital’s law and order establishment.

Commissaire Zahia Cherkaoui of the Crime Squad, of North African origin, leads the investigation against all the odds: she can rely on few friends against the minions of the New Order, who will stop at nothing to get in her way and prevent her from bringing to light their terrible secret.

To get to that secret and the identity of the murderer, she will have to solve a riddle that thrusts its roots deep into the darkest pages of French history, beyond the “Nordwind” German offensive in the winter of 1945, the gruesome murder of a solicitor in an Alsace village and the mysterious dealings of the Holy Sacrament institution.