“This
by-the-pulses thriller by a talented new
writer promises a body of work that will
provide a new generation with maximum
satisfaction.” Robert
Stone
(Author of Dog Soldiers, Damascus Gate
etc.)
“The
hero of Leclere’s hard-to-put-down novel, the
Gitane-smoking Xavier Lombard, a French private
detective living in seedy lodgings in North London,
is employed by an elderly Jewish German couple
to track down their missing son. Lombard stumbles
on an horrific story of children being bought
and sold to satisfy the sexual perversions of
rich men. The plot can be dispensed with in a
couple of lines and, although Leclere certainly
knows how to tell a story, it is his style that
is absolutely compelling. Having a French detective
at the centre of the book gives the author the
chance to examine London life with a certain detachment.
Leclere makes the reader look anew at the dingy
streets, the parks and shops of North London.
Lombard lives among the working class and the
social dropouts, listening to their stories of
loneliness and sexual fantasy, while at the same
time exploring an international trade in human
flesh.
His gift is an ability to interconnect the two
worlds. Lombard’s neighbour confesses that he
watches a teenage girl who believes she is alone
in her bathroom.
“Leclere
fashioned Lombard into one of the more memorable
crime fiction character of late ... The Lost Son
is a first rate story with Lombard the unforgettable
star ... A rare find...” Larry Chollet
(The Bergen Record - New Jersey) “...
The Lost Son is the story of French Detective
Xavier Lombard ... Leclere has created in Lombard
a man with the same headstrong integrity and occasional
pig-headedness of Chandler’s Marlowe ... a compelling
and rounded character who has you rooting for
him from the word go. His investigation is filled
with twists and turns which leave you begging
for more...” Catherine
Etoe (The
Camden New Journal) “...
A stylish and gripping first novel ... [the film
is] a total waste of a great character like Lombard..." Cosmo Landesman (The Sunday Times)
From
this shabby, second-hand experience, Lombard is
thrown into a far more corrupt world where Third
World children are sold, used for sex, and then
murdered. Never sensational and always deeply
moral, the narrative delves into a world of Nazi-hunters
and flesh-peddlers, setting it against the half-remembered
dreams of personal tragedy: flashbacks reveal
Lombard is emotionally destroyed because his wife
and son were murdered. The reader learns about
Lombard’s appearance not from the authorial voice
but through interaction with others. For example,
it becomes clear Lombard is attractive to both
sexes. In a pub, two gay men make admiring comments
which he satirically rebuffs. (He is clearly heterosexual
but, it is work, rather than sex, which obsesses
him.) Leclere has created a flawed hero unable
to connect to anyone or to commit to love, along
with a complex set of characters. Flitting through
the narrative is Lombard’s ex-girlfriend, Nathalie,
an addict and part-time prostitute. Only with
Nathalie is there a recognition of a kind of code
of honour among the emotionally brutalised. The
most complex character is the child-peddler, Martin,
who delivers an existential speech on the virtues
of the Swiss cuckoo clock. (The cuckoo is, of
course, a metaphor for those who abandon their
young.) There are several lost boys. There is
the son Lombard has lost to the world of crime;
the boy rescued from the child-traffickers - and
Leonard, the lost son of Holocaust survivors.
Lombard, too, is a lost boy, forced to live away
from his native country. The novel is a hymn to
lost innocence, written with intelligence and
flair.” Julia
Pascal (The
Jewish Chronicle - London)
‘Here
we go again,’ said Deborah De Moraes; ‘Simplify
and damn.’
‘Don’t you believe in simplicity?’ asked
Lombard.
‘Should I?’
‘We all have to like what we become, Mrs.
De Moraes. Cowards included. We achieve
this by complicating things a little. But
it’s never that complicated really,’ replied
Lombard.
‘Huh!’
London. Leonard Spitz is thirty years old
and missing. Mrs. Spitz is a worried mother,
Mr. Spitz a resigned father, and their daughter
Deborah as proud as her looks and as cold
as the family’s money. All reckon the missing
man has succumbed to his fondness for drugs
again. Only, Xavier Lombard finds out that
before vanishing Leonard had got himself
involved with people who get up in the morning
to peddle children for a living.
Meanwhile,
Bill the pet shop owner gets himself a puppy
for company. Perkins the butcher-landlord
has to raise his rent, and three bored Los
Angeles teenage girls kill time in a children’s
playground. And on Hampstead Heath, a little
man with a cell-phone and a pony-tail finds
life really hard trying to shoot a movie
scene…
