Skilfully written and neatly executed...elegant and aesthetically pleasing.
Gripping and intelligent. -- Philip Pullman * The Guardian *
Dazzling. Publishers Weekly (US), star review;
An engaging tale of domestic intrigue in backwater France with two appealing detective figures.
Highly accomplished, The Accident on the A35 works on several levels... The narration has the simple momentum of classic crime writing... It has a denouement like something out of Greek tragedy but delivers as a proper police procedural too... Burnet's cleverness doesn't get in the way of your enjoyment but playfully adds levels of meaning. -- Anthony Cummins * Observer *
Very much a novel of skillfully drawn characters... With its nostalgic echoes of crime fiction of the past and elegant, economical prose, it affords a variety of quiet and satisfying pleasures. -- Barry Forshaw * Financial Times *
Extravagant talent. -- Mark Lawson * Guardian *
Both a classy detective story and a stylish meditation on agency and existence. If Roland Barthes had written a detective novel, then this would be it. -- Philip Womack * Literary Review *
Reads like a lavishly detailed, psychologically accurate, intelligent, well-plotted, unsimple Simenon... Burnet has proved himself to be the literary games-master. -- David Robinson * Books from Scotland *
Intriguing... distinctive... atmospheric, often surprising, with a denouement which is beautifully under-played. -- Allan Massie * Scotsman *
[A] truly superlative tale... fascinating... one of the most clever and compelling novels to be published this year -- Lesley McDowell * Herald *
As steeped in the works of Simenon as a good boeuf bourgignon is in red wine. The characters' pretensions are mercilessly exposed in frill-free prose... What matters, of course, is whether a novel's characters seem to the reader to be alive. Burnet's do. -- Jake Kerridge * Telegraph. *
There are so many echoes of French writers in this book... [Raymond] is a fantastic depiction of the typical alienated teenager. -- Alex Clark * BBC Radio 4 Open Book.; *
Simenon fans will feel at home in the claustrophobic and petty-minded atmosphere of the French provinces.
Graeme Macrae Burnet's best book yet. A unique and compelling novel...[It] works perfectly as a page-turning crime fiction, but it's also moody and Gallic and wittily deadly serious. -- Chris Dolan
Fans of His Bloody Project will [enjoy] familiar themes including questions of authorship, betrayal, family, love, death, truth and lies (or rather, what can be said to be true, if anything, and what is false?), and the possibilities of youth versus the reality of adulthood. -- Alistair Braidwood * Scots Whay Hae *
Elegant, craftily written and frequently funny -- Phil Miller * Herald *
Clever, meandering and oh, so French... Burnet really has - a rare thing nowadays - a novelist's eye... I confess myself seduced by the atmosphere of provincial ennui. I longed to shrug gallically at a detective through a haze of cigarette smoke, to pour myself a drink from a cut-glass decanter, to drive to the next town to make acrobatic love to a beautiful...I'm getting carried away. -- James Marriott * Times; *
A crime novel with post-modern flourishes... Beautifully observed...with understated humour... Wry, intelligent and a lot of fun. -- Andrew Taylor * Spectator *
