The Union of Predators

Throughout France, and then across Europe, the police are discovering the bodies of brutally tortured people, who suffered for a long time before dying. Each crime scene is marked by the same mysterious symbol, yet it is obvious that different people committed the murders. What is happening? Is there a killer and his imitators on the loose? Is there some connection among the cruel anonymous individuals driven by an irresistible, primal predator instinct? Perhaps they are sending signals to each other? And where will tragedy strike next? We might sleep easier at night if we didn’t know... The detective thrillers and noirs of Maxime Chattam sell in millions in France and have become bestsellers in two dozen other countries. Fans of Jean-Christophe Grangé and Franck Thilliez cannot help but appreciate these tightly wound novels, where events rush headlong from the first lines to a completely stunning finale, and none of the characters escapes with minor bruises. “I’m very glad I managed to traumatize you,” Maxime Chattam tells us, and he’s almost not joking: in the novel “The Union of Predators,” the first in his series about the incredible crimes that the Paris investigative department must unravel, abysses of evil are opened. For the first time in Russian!