‘Between Two Worlds’ Olivier Norek

Translated from the French by Nick Caistor
Published by Quercus,
23 May 2024.
ISBN: 0-85705-921-5 (HB)

Syrian police officer Adam Sirkis is afraid his cover as an anti-Bassad activist has been blown. He needs to get his wife and daughter out first, sending them with people-smugglers to France – to the Jungle in Calais. As soon as he can, he follows them – but there’s no trace of them at the camp, and it will take all his police training to survive there himself.

Each of Norek’s novels plunges you into a reality that’s miles away from a conventional crime novel. His Banlieue Trilogy followed the work of police officers in Paris’s most dangerous suburb. In Between Two Worlds he moves to newly-appointed lieutenant Bastien Millar, finding his feet in Calais. Like Adam, he has a wife and daughter, but his wife is suffering depression after the death of her father, and he throws himself into police work to escape his helplessness at home. He soon finds out that normal rules don’t apply in policing the Jungle and its thousands of refugees who try each night to escape on lorries bound for England.

Inside the camp, Adam is also finding out that his police instincts will only get him into more trouble. In this miileu, the violence in the book is almost taken for granted; the shocking opening pages where people smugglers tell a mother she must throw her coughing child overboard prepares us for the ruthlessness of those involved. Because of this, I’d almost forgotten the murders Adam wanted to investigate by the end of the book, but it turned out to be a whodunnit after all, cleverly plotted, with a central shocking and unexpected revelation, followed by another. Norek’s writing is swift-paced and vivid, taking you right into the migrants’ world.

A moving, haunting story of two ordinary policemen caught up in the violence of our times.
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Reviewer: Marsali Taylor

Olivier Norek served as a humanitarian aid worker in the former Yugoslavia, before embarking on a eighteen-year career in the French police, rising to the rank of capitaine in the Seine-Saint-Denis Police Judiciare. He has written six crime novels, which have sold a million copies in France and won a dozen literary prizes.

Marsali Taylor grew up near Edinburgh, and came to Shetland as a newly-qualified teacher. She is currently a part-time teacher on Shetland's scenic west side, living with her husband and two Shetland ponies. Marsali is a qualified STGA tourist-guide who is fascinated by history, and has published plays in Shetland's distinctive dialect, as well as a history of women's suffrage in Shetland. She's also a keen sailor who enjoys exploring in her own 8m yacht, and an active member of her local drama group.  Marsali also does a regular monthly column for the Mystery People e-zine. 

Click on the title to read a review of her recent book
Death At A Shetland Festival

www.marsalitaylor.co.uk