DOA - Citoyens Clandestins (2007)

Country:France

Genre:Thriller

Pages:724


Among my French language readings are the Scandinavian crime writers. Folio Policier collection does a good job at gathering the best of the international crime fiction elite. Among my favorite are Gunnar Staalesen, Jo Nesbo and the very dynamic (and very dead) Stieg Larsson. Although I have a prejudice against most French writers (they are pretentious and uninteresting existentialists), I decided to give a chance to DOA, who seemed to be racking every prize possible in the crime fiction department (French language sub-section). Citoyens Clandestins (Underground Citizens), his latest and his thickest novel appealed to me by the cover and the deliberate use of Arabic protagonists.

I'm still not to sure what was going on, but here's my take on it. The novel situates itself around 9/11, which means it starts before (March 24th) and ends after (somewhere in 2002). There's a shipment of VX Gas on the road from the Middle East to Europe, which puts everybody on the edge, 9/11 paranoia of course not helping. The story of DOA's novel is the articulation of a social, economic and military system, trying the close down on this potential menace. You've got cops, soliders, journalists, politicians and your everyman, trying to trench up the danger. What I think DOA (what a shitty pseudonym) tried to achieve was a sense of scope of war, a feeling of war throughout the tumbled lives of the majority. In that sense, the novel achieves its goals. It's the rest that doesn't stick into one homogeneous meal. There's meat, carrot, sauce, but there's no stew.

Citoyens Clandestins is plagued by a number of mechanical issues that painfully drags it away from its two main goals: 1)Touching people and 2)Telling a good story. First of all, there are way too many characters and agencies. The fact that there's no focus on a single character makes it hard to develop emotional attachment. Some might dig Lynx for his strength and other might appreciate Karim or Amel for their integrity, but despite being more focused on, these three are underdeveloped, so you can imagine the rest.

The reason why it happens is that DOA separated his chapters in tiny (microscopic) segments that go from one to three pages. You constantly bounce in between settings, which makes for confusion and impossibility to care. Personally, I didn't gave a shit about any of the characters, except maybe for a little anitipation of the next sadistic Lynx antic. I'm not being harsh here, there are simply no reasons to like them. I could feel that Amel had been built up to gather sympathy, but despite her integrity and her smarts, she appears as weak. When you don't give a damn about characters, you end up not giving a damn about the narration and end up confused, which was my state as I ended up that novel.

Another issue I want to address is the research & culture Vs storytelling angle that DOA took. I think that sharing personal culture with your readers is a double edged sword. There are two things that the writer did that annoyed me to no end. First of all, the number of agencies and the acronyms used. I know that DOA knows how the French defense system works, but after reading his novel, I don't know myself. Also, his use of music around the character of Lynx made me discover a few interesting bands, but made him a music snob more than the kick-ass character the writer hoped for. I'll admit that torturing and killing people to music is original, but there's no special flavor to Lynx's tastes. There's no Patrick Bateman intellectualization of pop music or Clockwork Orange operatic violence. Just a dude listening to techno music.

The central story is entertaining despite being uneventful. Things move slow and you lose sometimes sight of what really matters, but I guess you feel the weight of war. The slow thud of general concern, turning into being a state of fear and paranoia. There is that feeling present across the reading, but the mechanical flaws of Citoyens Clandestins makes it hard for me to recommend it. DOA shows promises and a kink for creative and tense situations, but this idea was too complex, early in his career. Keep an eye on DOA, he has potential, but he's just not mature the way other writers of the genre like Robert Ludlum are.