Three shades of noir

In the days of cheap paperbacks, publishers sometimes printed two pulp novels in one volume, back to back. Ariel Winter has done one better, because The Twenty- Year Death consists of three novels, dealing with murders committed over the course of two decades, each told in the style of a great crime writer.

The first is set in 1931 France, hommage to Georges Simenon’s Inspector Maigret. A corpse found floating in the flooded drains of Verargent turns out to come from the local prison, from which there is no escape. Inspector Pelleter has just visited the prison to interview a serial killer he has arrested, and is drawn into the investigation. Among the anomalies he discovers is the murdered man’s daughter, the beautiful Clothilde-ma-Fleur, still a teenager but living near the prison and married to a successful American writer named Shem Rosenkrantz.