Notre-Dame-de-la-Merci A Novel

On a cold wintery day in the dark dead-end northern Quebec village of Notre-Dame-de-la-Merci, two men and a woman are entangled in a triangle that is only destined for tragedy. There is Odette, the widow of a Hells Angels biker and a small-time coke dealer, Daniel the local snowplow driver and Jean, a young man willing to do anything to get out of this miserable nowhere town. Looking on is Quentin Mouron’s narrator, who watches help-lessly as the calamity unfolds. He can only look on and ask questions. It is these questions, throbbing and multifaceted, that gives the story a universal resonance, far exceeding the action. Notre-Dame-de-la-Merci's story of crime and desperation, calling to mind the atmosphere and characters of Fargo, where amidst the cold harshness of winter dirtbags and delin-quents find themselves on a collision course and catastrophe is always a matter of time.

Quentin Mouron is a Swiss-Canadian novelist who has written five novels in Switerzland that have seen his critical notoriety sky rocket in the literary scenes of France and French-speaking Switzerland. Born in Lausanne, Mouron spent his childhood in Quebec Canada. His books have now been translated into German and his crime/mystery novel Three Drops of Bloodand a Cloud of Cocaine has been translated into English.