Simply a great name in literature!

I did not know Roger Jon Ellory before beginning Only the Silence (2007), the first of his books translated into French but fifth installment of the British writer. And clearly the French literary world has yet whenever this author talent since only three of his novels (it therefore Vendetta - The Anonymous 2005 - 2008) have been proposed to the French public.

Ellory is a great storyteller, one of those rare writers who know how to skillfully unfold a story not based on virtually the only psychological aspect of the protagonists without his story is abstract. Its main character, the tortuous Joseph Vaughan, is one of the richest characters and the most successful we have offered literature. It inevitably arouses empathy, see the pity, but its creator actually not only a victim on which to mourn the player. There was something dark, a dark side to Joseph that made me think of a character in Dostoyevsky what there is in him torture, torment and guilt. The specter of Crime & Punishment has floated in a corner of my mind throughout the reading, to the point that the horrors endured by Vaughan have almost convinced me of his duplicity. And the epilogue, dry as a shot, was not completely turned away from the idea. I am sure that these questions are perfectly adequate and controlled by the author who, by choosing to give us a single point of view of Joseph, discusses drawing in a blur that only a careful examination of the chronology of events contradicted. Besides, nothing is clear, even when the outcome occurred and Ellory cleverly leaves room for many interpretations, probably more fantasized than real, but titillate the imagination of the reader and make the book more than it seems to be its summary. Only because Silence is not strictly speaking a detective novel, I rapprocherai more, once again, the great psychological novels - including Russian - which, while shedding light on some of the intricacies of the personality of their characters obliterate enough things to make people want to read them, to seek what could we escape and some hidden message that will change the perspective. Optical fascinating when you think that Joseph is suffering from absences, horribly realistic nightmare, as if the personality that was given to us to see escamotait the secret nature of an evil that would devour it. The death march at his side without anyone manages to totally convince that he is not intimately related.

In over 400 pages Ellory cleverly embeds its reader, carefully distilling his plot without lapsing into cheap and artificial suspense too often used by others. His style is clear, precise and a few sentences, some thoughts are gems that shine without ostentatious glitz. There are few descriptions, few paintings but minimalism is incredibly effective, again leaving the spotlight to the reader's imagination and inviting him to grasp it. However nothing is given easily and it is requested a minimum of effort the reader, if only to follow this story constructed almost contrapuntal playing on close up flashbacks and ingeniously distilled that maintain a maliciously some perplexity. Ellory ballote we skillfully between suspicion and compassion, giving his account a dynamic that continues unabated until its conclusion.

I discovered this novel with a fascinating author of which I intend to get to know but also a fairly new genre, as if Dennis Lehane had met Dostoevsky, inflicting a character at once the emotions of this it undergoes and its interpretation of his life, until sinking into oblivion as Teddy Daniels (Shutter Island D.Lehane) or finish eaten by them as Raskolnikov (Crime & Punishment F .Dostoïeski).