Ever since “discovering” him last year, I’ve been a devoted
admirer of Paul Halter. Over the last few months, three new books have been planned
for release, and I’ve been excitedly keeping track.
Le Voyageur du Passé (
The
Traveller from the Past), a brand-new Dr. Alan Twist adventure, is due to
be released next week. Another was Halter’s second short story collection,
La Balle
de Nausicaa (
Nausicaa’s Ball)
which I reviewed soon after its release. The third book,
Spiral, was released earlier this month.
Spiral marks an
interesting departure for Halter—it is a young adult novel set in the modern
day world, a setting he has avoided in novels and used sparingly in short
stories.
When
I had the honour of interviewing him a while back, I took the opportunity
to ask him why he chose to write a novel set in modern day. The answer was
simple: the publisher, Rageot, commissioned the book as part of its brand-new “Thriller”
line of books, and one of the conditions was to set it in modern day. “I
considered it my duty to initiate young readers to the locked
-room mystery!” M. Halter said at one
point. But did he succeed in doing that?
