Damn. Just look! I’ve gone and got another bloody handprint on a brand new book that’s arrived here at Crime Fiction Lover HQ. Oh, wait, what’s that? Ah… my mistake…

This particular hand print is the cover graphic for Bred to Kill, the second Franck Thilliez novel that Penguin is promoting this year and the sequel to Syndrome E, which we’ve just reviewed here. Accidental detective Lucie Henebelle is back at it, alongside Inspector Sharko, after the brutal murder of a graduate student who was studying primates at a research centre near Paris. Initially, the apes were blamed but the animals are innocent and Eva’s death is the result of a secret she discovered – three mad scientists are planning to release a 30,000-year-old virus. And, I’m betting said virus is going to be a lot worse than a headache and a sore throat for a lot of people.

According to the blurb, this thriller demonstrates Thilliez ability to inject cutting edge science into his novels and here we have genetics, palaeontology and some social anthropology. His work has been likened to that of Michael Crichton and Nic Pizzolatto, the creator of True Detective. Syndrome E was originally translated in 2012 but was reprinted earlier in 2015, presumably thanks to the film being optioned by a Hollywood production company.

Translated by Mark Polizzotti, this hardback is a beauty to behold and I’ve described some of its features below. It’s 384 pages in length and will be released 5 March 2016 in print and 8 January for Kindle. Pre-order your copy here.

Here’s the book in its dust cover with that bloody handprint on it.

And here’s the cloth-bound volume au naturel.

The chapter heads have a striking band of black – you don’t see that much nowadays.

Not sure if you can quite tell from this picture but the dust jacket has an almost sandpaper-like finish to it. Very tactile indeed. Like.