The signal, by Maxime Chattam

It had been a long time since Maxim Chattam he had been giving a good account of his narrative capacity in a dark literature that epitomized the paranomal and the thriller.

And as the thriller was given more prominence, it was also attracting more and more the attention of so many readers who find in the suspense genre the natural supply for their bedside readings.

Until arriving at «The signal», one of those round novels that has already seated him at the table of his compatriots Franck thilliez o Bernard Minnier. Every time Fred Vargas, the also French mistress of the noir, politely absent herself to occupy other tables of greater glory. More than anything for the recognition of great awards of Literature with capital letters.

When a writer becomes the protagonist of a plot, a feeling of strangeness, of ambiguity between author and character is generated. Ideal for building puzzling and labyrinthine stories like "The Shining" or "Misery" or even "The truth about the Harry Quebert case«.

This time we meet Tom Spencer. And again we enter the game of escape, of dislocation, of the disturbing sensation of a trip that can make the idyllic appearance of the married couple and their three children jump.

Indeed, we soon see that the escape of stress towards Mahingan Falls (a little further south of Maine, does that sound familiar?) Ends up becoming one of those ambushes of destiny, fed up with everything happening between happiness and prosperity and surrendering to the arms of the devil and madness as a game with a difficult exit.

The question in a recurring argument is to discover if the author manages to raise the tension to the level of his mythical referents. And yes, it completely succeeds.

Because the devilish handling of the paranormal comes to the author already ex officio. And the plot of those flashes of estrangement that leaves us on the brink of a catharsis of fear is truffling. A fear that is combined with the search for a way out that precisely happens to find truths, reasons, reasons.

Only once the world prepares to be swallowed up by its shadows, the solution to the hecatomb cannot be tackled by easy clues but by trying to deduce the meaning of the signs towards the end. Everything fits into a plan that roars like distant thunder, awaiting the sinister storm of events to come.

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