One of my favorites

I'm a huge fan of foreign titles (the good ones anyway) and this is one of my favorites. Not many people in the states know who Jean-Christophe Grange is. You'd really have no reason to. I watch a lot of movies and am a big fan of Jean Reno. In searching through some of the movies he's starred in in past years, I came across a movie called The Crimson Rivers. It's just a great movie and I suggest you check it out.

Anyway, as of a little while back, the English translation of Grange's book Blood Red Rivers, the title Crimson Rivers is based on, was still available to order through Amazon and even Barnes and Noble. I snatched it up, along with all of the other Grange titles I could find. Most of his books still seem to be fairly easy for American audiences to come by - Amazon has both new and used copies of most of them available.

You'll have to forgive me as it's been a while since I read this one, but here is a brief synopsis of Flight of Storks: 

Louis Antioch is hired to help track a group of storks and their flight migration into Africa. The stork population has been decreasing incrementally each year and the scientist who hires him wants to know why. Then, the scientist is brutally murdered just before the job is to begin. Antioch continues his task, even though his employer is dead, and follows the birds through a variety of foreign locales. What he discovers about the birds, and subsequently his employer's death, makes this an extremely exciting read. 

Grange's style is unforgivable and violent, though it is by no means the most graphic that I have come across. The translation is great. There's a sense that you are reading Grange's work rather than Grange's French work translated by a third party into English. It loses none of its effectiveness. 

I am such a huge fan of this man's work that I am sorely tempted to get copies of his latest two titles and read them in French. If any of you read Shelf Awareness, the Friday questions ask the interviewee what book they are an advocate for ... well, Grange and, by turn, translated works are the author and cause I am a total advocate for, so this is not the last you'll see on either in this blog. For now, though, I recommend you try and find a copy of Flight and if you are lucky enough to come across it, you'll see what I mean about this amazing author. (there are a ton of used copies available through Amazon).