This heart-stopping psychological thriller has been translated into numerous languages and made into two films, including a Hollywood version. The main action of the story takes place from the mid 1970s to the mid 1980s but the structure of the novel is complex, jumping back in time to show us previous episodes in the life of the villain, Raymond Lemorne.


The book opens with Rex Hofman and Saskia Ehlvest driving to their holiday destination in the South of France. After stopping at a petrol station, Saskia does not return to the car. Rex looks for her and waits for her but she has simply disappeared. Years later we see Rex with a new girlfriend. At this point and ever since Saskia’s disappearance he has been obsessed by his attempts to find her or find out what happened to her.


Krabbé’s unemotional and systematic description of the way Raymond Lemorne abducts Saskia and drives away with her in his car is undoubtedly influenced by the calculating logic necessary to win at chess, another interest of the author and journalist and a subject on which he has published extensively. Lemorne even observes that his victim reminds him of one of his daughters but this does not seem to jog him out of his mechanical progress toward the horrendous crime he is about to commit.


Years later, when Lemorne contacts Hofman and confirms that Saskia is dead, Hofman goes with him in order to discover exactly how she died, knowing that he too will die. Throughout the car journey with Lemorne, Hofman reassures himself that he can get out of the car and walk away from the situation at any time, much as Lemorne himself did when he committed his crime years before. The end is a claustrophobic nightmare.


The reader is left wondering if every human being is capable of going through with an act which will have such profound implications. In their separate ways, do Rex Hofman and Raymond Lemorne each have a flaw in their psychological make-up, or do they represent an aspect which is present in all of us?

A girl of about twenty-five, who reminded him of Denise, got out of a car with Dutch plates. Lemorne stood by the coffee-vending machine and watched her walk right past him on her way to the corridor where the rest rooms were¼.

Lemorne opened his door, leaned over toward the backseat, and straightened up again. ‘It’s rather heavy,’ he said, pointing at the box. ‘The easiest would be if you got in for a moment.’

He gestured toward the other door. And in her face too, he saw that dark shadow, that glimmer of mistrust.

‘An R?’ said Lemorne.

‘Yes.’ She began to walk around, holding her cans. He reached into the backseat; before she got to her door he had already inverted the bottle and had the wet rag in his hand.

She sat down and turned toward the box.

‘Excuse me just a moment,’ said Lemorne and reached around behind her. With a wild gasp she turned away from him; Lemorne bent his arm and covered her face with his hand, tensed and forceful.

She arched her back like a high diver about to take the plunge. Then she let her drinks drop and slid down into the seat.

Gotcha, thought Lemorne.

He started the car and drove out of the parking lot, onto the Autoroute du Soleil. (p. 79-80, tr. Claire Nicholas White)