Police procedural set in PARIS and AVEYRON

17th June 2026

Surface by Olivier Norek, police procedural set in Paris and Aveyron.

TR:  Nick Caistor

When reading Surface by Olivier Norek you feel an immediate connection with the characters and their settings in Paris and rural France, such is the skill of the author. It came as no surprise to discover, later, that Norek is a screenwriter. He’s also writing this police procedural novel from the perspective of having served eighteen years as a police officer in France. Norek’s descriptive skills give the essence of a place without overshadowing the action – and there’s plenty of that! Olivier Norek has written many crime fiction books based on his police experience, but Surface is the first to be translated into English (by Nick Caistor, and published by Open Borders Press).

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Noémie Chastain is a police captain based in a central Paris drug squad. A drug bust operation goes seriously wrong, fracturing her health, her confidence, her relationships and her career. In the aftermath, she is cast adrift by her senior officer. She is sent to the countryside to secretly assess the efficiency of operations in a small rural police station and preferably make a recommendation to close it down. The posting is sugar coated as an opportunity to relax and recover from the previous trauma, but she isn’t fooled. Her chance to repair herself will come at the price of the destruction of her new colleagues’ settled existence.

Chastain isn’t expecting anything to happen in this sleepy Aveyron backwater, but there’s a dead body on day one. When a second corpse appears and someone mentions a cold case involving missing persons, she goes into full investigative mode. She’s a somewhat abrasive character but her years of hard-won policing skills stand her in good stead when dealing with the first serious crime that Decazeville has had for years.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, especially for the author’s tender handling of each character – a rotten trick, because it makes it almost impossible to work out who is good and who is bad! He employs a similar tactic when describing the landscape, which is seen through Chastain’s eyes as a newcomer but also through the eyes of those whose families have lived in the area for generations. Norek has said in the past that he immerses* himself in the places he describes in order to be authentic, and you really feel this when you read Surface.

[*Pun not intended – you will see when you read it!]

I understand that the book has been serialised for TV in France, so I’m keeping everything crossed that it appears on British TV too. I thoroughly recommend reading the Acknowledgements in the back of the book – it’s always fascinating to see which of the author’s friends’ names are used in the story, and who became a villain! Having devoured every word between the covers you will probably, like me, await future Norek books with eager anticipation.

Sue for the TripFiction Team

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