Crimson Rivers

In Gerne, a small town in the French Alps, a university librarian has been murdered. Not just killed, but with particular brutality. Who could have thought of settling scores with this person? The local police are unable to uncover the... truth, and to assist them, police commissioner Nieman arrives from the capital. At the same time in Sarzac, another provincial town in France, two strange events occur on the same day: a robbery of the school archive and the breaking into a cemetery crypt where the body of ten-year-old Juda Itéiro rests. The connection between these crimes is elusive, but the closer the detectives get to the solution, the more terrifying and bloodier the victims left by the mysterious criminals become, and the clearer the dependency between the drama at the mountain university and the dark incidents in Sarzac is traced.
A famous film based on the novel was released in 2000, starring Jean Reno and Vincent Cassel in the leading roles.