Between Two Worlds

A Financial Times Best Summer Book of 2024

A Times 10 Best Crime and Mystery Books of 2024 so far

"The greatest exponent of the policier at work today" Mark Sanderson, The Times

Adam Sirkis needs to flee Syria. A captain in Assad's military police, he's about to be exposed as a covert member of the Free Syrian Army, and he knows exactly what fate awaits him.

His first move is to send his wife and daughter to Libya, where they can find a boat heading for Europe. Adam himself winds up in France in the Calais Jungle, the infamous camp for migrants seeking passage to the fabled Youke.

Bastien Miller, a police lieutenant freshly transferred to the Calais police force, arrives at about the same time. His wife is drowning in grief for her late father and their teenage daughter may never forgive them for the move.

When Adam risks his life to protect a young migrant, the two officers make a deal - information on Adam's family in exchange for intel from the Jungle. Then a body is found in the camp, and the deal becomes an alliance, uniting them in a common cause to do one good deed in a world where vice is a virtue.

Reader Reviews

***** "This is an exceptional book, the best one I've read in 2024 so far and I've read a lot of excellent books this year by some very big name authors"

Translated from the French by Nick Caistor

Extraordinary . . . a police procedural unlike anything else in contemporary crime fiction, drawing on Norek's experience during 18 years in the French force -- Joan Smith The Times
Diamond-hard, unrelenting Gallic crime fiction with a telling strand of social history -- Barry Forshaw Financial Times Best Summer Books of 2024
My expectations were more than met . . . Vivid scene-setting and a fine translation by Nick Caistor keep the narrative flowing quickly in this absorbing, topical story Financial Times

Olivier Norek served as a humanitarian aid worker in the former Yugoslavia, before embarking on an eighteen-year career in the French police, rising to the rank of capitaine in the Seine-Saint-Denis Police Judiciare. He has written six crime novels, which have sold more than a million copies in France and won a dozen literary prizes.

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