Three Days and a Life

By: Pierre Lemaitre

Narrated by: Peter Noble

Length: 5 hrs and 55 mins

Publisher's summary

Longlisted for the CWA International Dagger Award, 2018

In 1999, in the small provincial town of Beauval, France, 12-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?

©2017 Pierre Lemaitre (P)2019 Hachette Audio

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

"Lemaitre is a skillful writer, employing his words carefully to sketch Antoine's feelings and fears so fervently that we desperately want to protect the child. Wonderful at creating grey protagonists, Lemaitre captures human frailty and reality, while simultaneously questioning our moral certainties."—Times of India