The Double Mother
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
From the author of the “wonderfully ingenious” (Marilyn Stasio, New York Times Book Review) novel After The Crash comes a brilliant work of deception that dives deep into the psyche of a child and cruel game of manipulating a person’s memory.
Four-year-old Malone Moulin is haunted by nightmares of being handed over to a complete stranger and begins claiming his mother is not his real mother. His teachers at school say that it is all in his imagination as his mother has a birth certificate, photos of him as a child and even the pediatrician confirms Malone is her son. The school psychologist, Vasily, believes otherwise as the child vividly describes an exchange between two women. Vasily begins recording their conversations and reinterprets the creatures Malone uses in the childish tales he recounts to his stuffed toy to piece the story together as much as he can.
Convinced that Malone is telling the truth, Vasile approaches police commander Marianne Augresse with the case, who has been searching for a gang of thieves that robbed a luxury store and left a couple dead in the neighboring town of Deauville to no avail. Not knowing why a child would lie and with perhaps her own own maternal and protective instinct kicking in, Marianne takes Vasile’s plead for help seriously.
Marianne and her team soon discern that Malone’s memory is in the hands of those around him; the cold members of the Moulin family and the people that they associate themselves with. With Malone’s recollection of the past quickly fading to give way to pirates, animals and other more innocent thoughts children have at his age, Marianne is desperate to find a through line.
Well-crafted and showcasing the fragility of a child’s cognition, The Double Mother is a riveting investigation to follow.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Why would precocious preschooler Malone Moulin insist that his parents weren't his parents? School psychologist Vasily Dragonman brings that conundrum to the attention of Capt. Marianne Augresse, a Le Havre police officer, in this brilliantly twisty mystery from French author Bussi (Don't Let Go). When Dragonman first met Malone, the boy claimed that he remembers a life before living with Dimitri and Amanda Moulin. These vague memories, which include pirates and a rocket, strike Augresse as nothing more than childish fantasies, however. Dragonman's belief that Malone is being truthful when the three-year-old says his stuffed animal, Gouti, tells him stories about his past doesn't help the psychologist's effort to get the police to investigate, especially in the absence of any evidence that Malone was being mistreated. While the single captain finds the psychologist personally appealing, she prioritizes the search for a wounded bank robber, until she gets a dramatic indication that Dragonman was on the right track. Fans of Fred Vargas's bizarre yet logical plots and complicated leads will be eager to seek out more of Bussi's work.
