Irene

by Pierre Lemaitre

This is the book that precedes Alex but was published in the UK after this.
It is violent to the point of being gratuitous and thereby losing some of its tension. Camille the main investigator in the trilogy is caught uop in a series of brutal murders undertaken by a serial killer who copies scenes from books written at the darker edges of the genre(Ellroy, Brett Easton Ellis etc). The trail leads to a dark and horrific ending.
I did not enjoy this as much as Alex but still an intriguing tale. Some of the tension was relieved by having read Alex first, which gives away the ending to this book. 6/10