Later, in Biarritz, Castang's granddaughter is seized by local louts, blah, blah, blah. Freeling's rambling is irksome, his 'characters' ciphers, his book failing utterly to engage an audience. The vacuum left by this tosh sucks in bizarre, antiquated punctuation, almost Random capital Letters, and irrelevant asides like a Black Hole. Alighting on this particular mode of scholarly aspiration tethered, albeit loosely, to the crime genre is a patronising slap in the face. An obstinate non-joiner he may be, but in this novel Freeling does nothing but insult us.
Bad books are one thing, bad books with pretension entirely another.