Pascal Contamine

Like many happy people, Bruno Hamel is leading an uneventful life until one afternoon, when his daughter is raped and murdered. When the murderer is arrested, a terrible project germinates in Bruno's darkened mind. He plans to capture the "monster" and make him pay for his crime.

Through an immigrant cab driver, our world collides with a nervous filmmaker, a lawyer whose new breasts her ex-boyfriend wants to see, a mystery man, a gay man who might or might not have AIDS, and a birthday girl who got stood up. It is a mixture of laughter and sadness, all floating on a sea of philosophy.

Police detective Jacques Laniel's life becomes a nightmare the day drive-by shootists gun down his partner Thomas Colin. His colleagues make matters worse by blaming him for the death, and after his wife leaves him, Laniel decides to quit the force and launch a private investigation into Colin's murder. Soon afterward, Laniel finds the bullet-riddled body of famed author and literature professor Zachary Osborne tied to his car hood. The professor's wife hires Laniel to solve the murder, but what the detective finds is ugly: Osborne was a part of a lucrative land-speculation deal that involved the sale of a crumbling old rectory that had been turned into a halfway house called the Haven of the Monsters. The name is apt, for all the residents are convicted killers who were given inordinately light sentences. When Lanier starts questioning the Haven's tenants and their crimes are revealed via flashback, it takes on the character of a David Lynch production.

The movements are simple, but the body struggles to follow.

Toronto, August 2001. Commander Robert Piche left Pearson Airport heading for Lisbon on an Airbus 330. Due to a significant fuel loss, he was headed for an almost certain crash. However, he courageously kept his cool and skillfully glided the plane to a safe landing, saving the 306 passengers on board. Back in Canada, Piche's criminal past and extraordinary life came to light, explaining somewhat how he was able to commit this heroic act.

David Wozniak is a perpetual adolescent who discovers that, as a sperm donor, he has fathered 533 children. He is advised that more than 100 of his offspring are trying to force the fertility clinic to reveal the true identity of "Starbuck," the pseudonym he used when donating his sperm. To make matters worse, his girlfriend Valérie is pregnant with his child, but doesn't feel that he is mature enough to be a father.

In response to the injustices and social inequalities he suffers, a man praises the beating as an ultimate means of communication ...

Ghislain is shocked to find his heart beating by his coccyx. He seeks the help of his brother, who concludes he must learn to laugh again.

The story takes place in 1910 in Montreal, Quebec, while a killer terrorized the city. In the same period, Florence and Camille Courval, two sisters originating in French Manitoba inherit the Eden Museum, where statues of wax in connection with criminal news are housed.

Sans rendez-vous

La reine rouge is the direct sequel to the novel 5150, rue des Ormes by Patrick Senécal, telling the story of Michelle Beaulieu, who has become a merciless killer, fleeing to start a new life following the terrible events of the kidnapping of the young Yannick Bérubé and the murders perpetrated by his father Jacques Beaulieu.