“The Lambs of Dawn” by Steve Laflamme: literary clues to spectacular murders!

MISE À DAY

Who is hiding behind a series of extremely violent deaths, supported by obscure formulas? A literature professor is called to the rescue.

Steve Laflamme is a regular at stories featuring extraordinary assassinations. In addition to writing it, he makes it the subject of his classes since he teaches literature at CEGEP and detective novels are on his program.

This assumed interest explains the singularity of his most recent novel, The Lambs of Dawn— his seventh, but the first he has published with Libre Expression. The story it tells is indeed inseparable from the knowledge possessed by Frédérique Santinelli, a professor at Laval University who, as she says, devoted her life to literature.

Laflamme had already used the Santinelli's character in a previous work, where she helped solve an investigation. This is what encourages her new hero, Lieutenant–Detective Guillaume Volta, of the Sûreté du Québec, to call on her.

Volta is indeed confronted with cruel and bizarre murders linked to equally curious texts. Santinelli quickly understands that it is a question of occultism, as practiced a hundred years ago by the writer Aleister Crowley and by the disciples of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.

The virtues of education

These real historical references will therefore be the foundation on which the novelist will build a thriller as intelligent as it is captivating, which will delight fans of reversals of situation than literary allusions.

This also allows the author to promote the virtues of education in democracy. The novel opens with a statement by Isaac Asimov denouncing anti-intellectualism, and the whole story will reinforce this conviction, with a solid argument to support it – albeit sprinkled with an excess of metaphors!

In addition to these characteristics, the survey invented by Laflamme is compelling in itself. The corpses multiply and the Volta-Santinelli tandem is threatened. How to stop a sectarian type organization of which they cannot identify who dominates it?

Added to this is the fact that the very character of Frédérique Santinelli is intriguing. She has no memory of her youth since, due to traumatic events, she had to receive, at the age of 18, a treatment that erased her memory.

At 37, Santinelli does not remember so that of the second half of his life. But of this one, she literally remembers everything. The slightest detail of everyday life, just like the text of the books she reads, imprints itself on her mind.

Hence the fact that she is so precious for a police investigation of the type led by Volta. The murderer(s) have fun leaving clues that Santinelli can not only decipher, but do so quickly.

Will that be enough to stop the gruesome slaughter underway? Laflamme keeps us spellbound until the end.

He nevertheless leaves us in suspense about his teacher's past. In this case, the mystery will have to continue until a next book that the conclusion announces and that we already wish!