Rider on the Rain - Sebastien Japrisot

My literary love affair with Japrisot began when I read The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun. I love his style and his ability to project so much in his novels, all fairly slender volumes by comparison, yet there is always the sense of having read something of substance.

In Rider on the Rain Japrisot manages to convey a sense of claustrophobic tension as Mellie Mau grapples with a life changing event in her life. The plot is intelligently constructed, the twists subtly poised to spring out at you from behind the most innocent of pages! The narrative structure ping pongs between straightforward third person narrative and play script dialogue. Not surprising then that a film was made of this story way back in 1970. I haven’t seen it but it is easy to imagine the book visually. And if the knowledge that a film was made of this story forty odd years ago makes you feel the book may be dated, fear not, it isn't! It reads as fresh as a contemporary thriller.

Japrisot also has a knack of pivoting situations to an unexpected outcome. I don’t want to give anything away but Mellie Mau manages to survive a harrowing ordeal with a dramatic resolution that determines the progress of the story. As a reader you believe that only you are privy to what Mellie has done but when the enigmatic Harry Dobbs makes an entrance you realise that may not be the case. What follows is a tense cat and mouse type game between Mellie and Dobbs that is almost as disturbing as the initial event that fuelled Dobb’s obsession, almost, of finding out the truth from Mellie. The contrasts between the two characters and the dynamic of their relationship is almost hypnotic.

I had a sense of Patricia Highsmith, too, whilst reading this, that strangely off centre feeling created out of ‘normal’ occurrences that spiral out of control. In short this is a compelling and immersive story with a denouement that has an unexpected elegance to it. Japrisot is such a talent.

My thanks to Gallic Books for a gifted copy.