Three Days and a Life

By: Pierre Lemaitre, Frank Wynne - translator

Narrated by: Peter Noble

Length: 5 hrs and 55 mins

Publisher's summary

In 1999, in the small provincial town of Beauval, France, twelve-year-old Antoine Courtin accidentally kills a young neighbor boy in the woods near his home. Panicked, he conceals the body and to his relief--and ongoing shame--he is never suspected of any connection to the child's disappearance.
But the boy's death continues to haunt him, shaping his life in unseen ways. More than a decade later, Antoine is living in Paris, now a young doctor with a fiancée and a promising future. On a rare trip home to the town he hates and fears, Antoine thoughtlessly sleeps with a beautiful young woman from his past. She shows up pregnant at his doorstep in Paris a few months later, insisting that they marry.

Meanwhile, the newly discovered body of Antoine's childhood victim means that the case has been reopened, and all of his old fears rush back. With the gravitational pull of his hometown strengthening its grip, Antoine may finally be forced to confront his past. Is he prepared to do what he must to keep his darkest secrets buried?

2018, Longlisted for the CWA International Dagger Award

©2017 Editions Albin Michel (P)2017 WF Howes Ltd

Critic reviews

"French crime maestro Pierre Lemaitre continues his upward movement in Three Days and a Life . . . This is literary crime writing of some distinction: a heady melange of Aldous Huxley and Robert Goddard."—The Guardian

"Thought-provoking and unsettling, Three Days And A Life is another work of genius from a master storyteller at the top of his game."—The Daily Express

"Taut character study and a vivid portrayal of an isolated community."—France Magazine

"Three Days and a Life was a fun, fast suspense novel that I very much enjoyed. I would definitely read more books by Pierre Lemaitre, who is known for getting into the minds of killers. That's exactly what he did with young Antoine, leaving the reader with a killer you couldn't help but care about."—Novel Visits

"Lemaitre has outdone himself. If you like great psychological novels, Three Days and a Life should be on your nightstand. Read it, savor, and read it again."
—Andrew Gulli, Strand Magazine

"A complex experiment in the social infrastructure of a small French town, right and wrong, and the rawness of the family unit . . . A great book that generates a lot of thought-provoking questions."
—Daily Republic

"Lemaitre is surely France's most elegant and imaginative crime writer."—The Times

"Three Days and a Life is excellent: A heartbreaking and masterful portrait of a man's life, marked by a childhood mistake."
—Crime by the Book

"Lemaitre may be the best current French writer of crime fiction."
—Financial Times

"No one is writing quirkier thrillers than Lemaitre, who gets inside the head of his unhinged protagonist with wicked delight while capturing the madness of the modern world. French favorite Lemaitre's novel, about a preteen on whom fortune smiles in the most devious ways after he accidentally kills a little boy, is a feverish, wickedly entertaining work."
—Kirkus Reviews