Élodie Duquette: A Novel

The first 'Élodie Duquette' novel. The second novel in the sequence will be published in 2024.





When the daughter of one of the most powerful businessmen in Bordeaux disappears in York, a young detective called Élodie Duquette is sent to England to join the investigating team. Together with her English colleague Tom Gould, she investigates Laura's life in York, London, and Bordeaux. The trail leads finally to an isolated villa on the Mediterranean coast.





A government spin doctor, a French restaurateur, a lap dancing club manager, and a victim of a grooming gang, are people of interest, but Laura remains an enigmatic figure, a runaway ghost.





Élodie has to deal with the unwanted attentions of Laura's father, Charles Roche, a man used to getting his way, and the anger and distress of Laura's uncooperating sister Camille. The tentative relationship that develops between Élodie and Gould is threatened by Roche's predatory and manipulative entitlement.





Simon Trowbridge's concise, elegantly written modern detective story, in which sexual exploitation and moral ambiguity are the underlying themes, is also a tender love story.