The Girl in red

A cold case comes up by a young girl who speaks with the dead people. Marine Thibeau has a strange new pupil in her class. A chubby and timid little girl of Irish descent, Gwendolyne communicates with a teenager who’s been dead for twenty years!Realizing that her pupil is ostracized because of her paranormal powers, the teacher takes the girl under her wing, defends her against bullies and believes in her frightening psychic premonitions. But how to reveal to the authorities that a series of murders, all foreseen by Gwendolyne, are very real and that they originate in the same long-forgotten cold case?Gendarme Thomas Moreau, assisted by the teacher, by the girl with second sight and by a weird bird watcher, embarks in an investigation that involves victims scattered in various regions of France. However, the associates must act quickly to get ahead of the killer who is about to strike for the fourth time and to murder the last man involved in the old and terrible unsolved case. Discover this panting thriller at the frontiers of paranormal. EXTRACT There was, however, one notable exception. One girl seemed to be excluded from these talkative little coteries. As a result, the child wandered around the periphery of the groups, perhaps gleaning a word here and there in the conversations, but was never allowed to participate. Or else she simply leaned against the huge plane tree in the center of the yard, or against the chain-linked fence, and stared with envy at the animated circles of youngsters who sometimes shrieked with laughter at some remark. To start with, most of her classmates had popular and contemporary Christian names such as Louane, Manon, Lola, Lina or Chloé. The girl’s admittedly beautiful but ancient Celtic first name, Gwendolyne, was considered old fashioned and funny. Unfortunately, in these days of styles and rigid uniformity among children and adolescents, her long mass of tightly curled carrotred hair, her very round and freckled face and her chubbiness, added to her out-dated clothes, ostracized her instantly; her peers also laughed at her bulky homemade sweaters and her old scuffed shoes. Discreetly, Marine approached one of the chattiest groups in the schoolyard. Among the laughing friends, she had spotted one of her best students. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Like many other Anglo-Saxon children, Brenda Lee O'Ryan was brought up on stories of ghosts that rattle their chains and haunt Scottish castles, of ladies in white, holding high a lamp, who roam the corridors of London homes and foretell imminent deaths, and of malicious leprechauns, those elves of the Irish forests, who hide the shoes of disobedient children during moonless nights. As a teenager, she turned to the crime novels of elderly English ladies in which the investigations were led by private detectives, sometimes of noble birth, stylishly dressed with or without bowler hats, who always found the assassin before the often incompetent police officers in frumpy clothes. Once an adult, she decided to write more contemporary whodunits that would combine the supernatural element that used to make her shiver as a child, with her own type of investigator – a sort of young, attractive and modern Miss Marple, in love with a, no less attractive, French police officer. Brenda Lee O’Ryan (the pen name of a well known published author) spent a great deal of her life in the United States. She learned to speak French in Quebec and loved France, which she discovered during her numerous trips to Europe. One day, she decided to set down her suitcases for good. Today she lives in French Catalonia, on the Mediterranean coast, near Perpignan.