"I shot him in the face," I admitted. "It was pretty ugly." Pause. "The situation, that is. Not his face."
Following a series of bad judgements, a young dealer in Oriental art and antiques, Nicolas Keszthelyi, finds himself alone and pursued by the police in the depths of the French countryside. In a final, desperate attempt to secure his freedom, he writes to Inspector Daphne Chantelouve, head of the investigation team, and lays out his side of the story...
Keszthelyi had originally come to Brittany to look at a collection belonging to a Carmelite convent. It was entirely by chance that he ran into an old acquaintance from London. It had been obvious from the start that Estrade - living in a borrowed house under an assumed name - was trouble, but the hidden gems of the convent's collection, and the possibility of an energetically adulterous liaison with a local housewife, convinced Keszthelyi to stick around.
Now he's the prime suspect in a series of murders, and the only way to prove his innocence is to tell the whole sorry tale, including the parts that the police would rather keep secret...
People Like Us is a story about fitting in, breaking the rules, and what to do with frozen courgettes.
(80,000 words, complete)