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The Disappearance of Adele Bedeau

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The Disappearance of Adele Bedeau

By: Graeme Macrae Burnet
Narrated by: Geoffrey Breton
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About this listen

From the author of the Man Booker short-listed His Bloody Project.

Manfred Baumann is a loner. Socially awkward and perpetually ill at ease, he spends his evenings quietly drinking and surreptitiously observing Adèle Bedeau, the sullen but alluring waitress at a drab bistro in the unremarkable small French town of Saint-Louis. But one day, she simply vanishes into thin air.

When Georges Gorski, a detective haunted by his failure to solve one of his first murder cases, is called in to investigate the girl's disappearance, Manfred's repressed world is shaken to its core, and he is forced to confront the dark secrets of his past.

The Disappearance of Adèle Bedeau is a literary mystery novel that is, at heart, an engrossing psychological portrayal of an outsider pushed to the limit by his own feverish imagination.

©2014 Graeme Macrae Burnet (P)2018 Audible, Ltd Crime Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Mystery Suspense Thriller & Suspense Fiction Crime Exciting Heartfelt Scary Disappearance

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All stars
Most relevant
Not quite what I was expecting but a great story none the less. The characters are believable as is the story line. Really well-written and narrated.

Excellent listen

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I really enjoyed this one. Something a little bit different. Well narrated too. Didn’t want it to end.

Very good

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Excellent reading of atmospheric French novel about a very ordinary seeming man with a past he needs to hide. Slow paced like a French film but rich in texture and characterisation. I really enjoyed it. Sadly it's the only novel by this author.

Engaging, atmospheric mystery in small town France

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What an intriguing tease this is! For a start The Disappearance of Adèle Bedeau isn’t Graeme Macrae Burnet’s follow-up to His Bloody Project (reviewed by me last year), but his first novel which never received much acclaim outside Scotland. It should have.

It’s a Simenon-esque murder mystery focused on the psychology rather than the act set in Saint-Louis, an undistinguished little town on the Rhine where loner Manfred Baumann has his lunch each day in the Restaurant de la Cloche whilst idly lusting after the amply proportioned waitress Adèle Bedeau. When Adèle disappears, the local detective suspects Manfred of murder, even though there’s as yet no body.

There are good reasons for his suspicions, but not the ones you might expect. The past lives of both Manfred and the detective are chillingly fleshed out, but just when you think it’s all about to be solved, there’s another clever twist.

And finally the real-life author comes in and says the whole story is his translation of a 1980s French cult novel by the teasingly anagramatic Raymond Brunet, and we get Brunet’s life which is uncannily like Baumann’s…

Puzzling, tantalising, intriguing, highly original, intelligent, it’s a top-rate listen, and the whole is enhanced by the narration.

Who's teasing who?

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He can say chapter 'THree' so I know it's possible, so why is he so lazy with his pronunciation? With constantly becomes wiv, father is farver, and 'probably' only has one B! Proberly the worst narrator ever. No mood felt and the 'suspense' which should be critical in a book like this just never appears because the narrator is duff. Story could be quite interesting, but find a narrator who knows how to speak, otherwise it's like fingers down a blackboard.

Narrator says 'wiv' constantly

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