Without Blood by Martin Michaud

If you’re a fan of Quebec thrillers, don’t miss Without Blood. Author Martin Michaud has been dubbed the master of the Quebec thriller. After reading two books in the Victor Lessard series, I can see why.

My thoughts

Though this is the second Victor Lessard novel published in English, it’s actually the first in the series by Martin Michaud. I haven’t figured out why the publishers didn’t publish the translation in the same order as the original series titles. It doesn’t really matter, to be honest. Both stand alone.

Plot

(I tried to avoid spoilers, but some may creep in. Sorry.)

Without Blood opens with a killer anticipating his first kill. He’s successful. The victim dies, no one detects the killer, and he loads his victim into the trunk of a stolen car. Then it jumps to Simone, a young woman hiding from unknown events in her past. The killer sees her crossing the street, loses his cool, and hits her with the car. (Mind you, he stole the car. And he has the corpse in the car trunk!)

Here’s where the story gets weird. After the killer hits Simone, a man named Miles rescues her. They hit it off and spend the entire day together: have coffee, listen to his neighbor, a jazz musician, play his instrument, and even tour the cemetery where he works. She spends the night in his apartment. In the meantime, detective Victor Lessard receives reports of a hit-and-run that has left a young woman hospitalized. Simone awakens in a hospital and decides to find Miles. And off she goes, narrowly avoiding the killer stalking her . . .

Meanwhile, a hospital official is murdered. (You can guess who the killer is.) Because of the man’s political connections and wealth, the case grabs the media spotlight. And with it, detective Lessard. His boss puts intense pressure on Lessard. Who, by the way, doesn’t need any more pressure on him. He’s a recovering alcoholic. Newly divorced, he’s aching over the separation from his wife and kids. (Michaud does a great job using this element in the story.) Plus he feels guilty over an operation that caused his demotion and the death of two of his men. But he doesn’t want his boss to have any reason to hand over this murder case to Lessard’s former colleagues in the Major Crimes Unit. It’s unthinkable.

Multiple Points of View

The story is told from several points of view. Detective Victor Lessard, of course. But we also dive into the mind of the nameless killer and one of his prey, Simone. Along the way, we get bits and pieces from other views, too: a car thief with a strange sense of honor; the first murder victim as he dies, worrying about the unemptied trash can; and various other minor characters. While Simone’s passages are in 1st person, the others are in 3rd person. As well, there are times when the narrator steps back from the present action and reflects on it in hindsight. (“If I had only known then what I know now . . .”) I’m more accustomed to a close 1st or 3rd person POV, and Michaud’s method took some time to adjust to.

He doesn’t stay in any one particular head for long. The story rapidly switches from one view to another, often several times in one chapter. It can be disorienting. Add to that the possible supernatural aspect to the story, and I spent a good part of the first half of the book confused. At times, I felt disconnected from the narrative because I didn’t know what was going on and couldn’t guess where the events were going.

Characters

I wished that the book had focused more on Victor than Simone. Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of time with Victor. But Simone wasn’t as interesting as he was, and she’s a major character. Sometimes she came across as not only confused, but deranged, and helpless (which seemed odd for a person in her previous line of work). For the longest time, I didn’t know why she desired to fly under the radar or what traumatic event led to her reluctance to relate to other people. That made it difficult to sympathize with her.

I found some of the other characters very intriguing. Miles, obviously: I wanted more of him! I enjoyed the car thief named Snake, too. Lessard’s other detectives are interesting, too. Michaud does a great job with characterizing them.

Some improbable elements

Certain plot points felt improbable. For example, a nurse allows a character to visit a hospitalized man at 3 a.m. The man and the visitor are strangers to one another, so this seemed strange to me. At other points, minor characters don’t react as I would expect. At one point, Simone barges into a stranger’s apartment, looking for Miles, and the homeowner, rather than call the police or even become angry/fearful, is merely annoyed. And invites her to look at her wedding album. Are people in Montreal this incredibly hospitable and trusting? Even in my relatively safe city, no one would react this way to an intruder. (You’d probably be shot, to be honest. The intruder, that is. The home owner would be the one pulling the trigger. We’re a little gun-crazy in the South.)

As well, there were a number of times when the police or Simone receive helpful information from strangers by sheer coincidence. This weakens the plot, unfortunately, because the story doesn’t move forward except through the killer’s actions. And even he looks rather incompetent.

Uneven start but ultimately satisfying

The book is uneven. The first half is bumpy. Lots of confusion, lots of characters, various plot elements to juggle. At times, I wondered if this might not work better as television or movie. It’s much easier to rapidly switch storylines in a visual medium, in my opinion.

Once I fell into the story’s rhythm–which took longer than I wanted–I enjoyed the novel. I even stayed up late to finish reading because I wanted to know what happens.

In the end, all the elements came together. It’s a wild, strange ride that embraces the messiness of life. We can’t know everything through facts and empirical proof. There’s an element of mystery that threads through our existence, and Martin Michaud does an excellent job showing this.

Recommended

I recommend Without Blood to those who enjoy thrillers with a possible supernatural element. Then move on and read the next Victor Lessard thriller by Martin Michaud, Never Forget, which I reviewed here.

Note: I received a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. I was not required to write a positive review. All opinions are my own.

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(I’ll add a note here. I read an ARC on the Kindle app on my phone. Sometimes an e-book’s formatting, coupled with the small phone screen, makes reading rapidly-changing points of view difficult. It’s especially true when it’s an ARC. These pre-publication difficulties won’t be there for readers of the published version.)