Excerpt from The Anomaly by Hervé Le Tellier , plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Ken lives in a two-bedroom apartment on the first floor of a detached house near Annemasse. For three whole weeks Blake just watches and puts together his plan. With the advance, he's bought himself an old Renault panel truck, fitted it out with rudimentary trappings—a seat, a mattress, extra batteries for lighting—and he's chosen a spot in a deserted parking lot that overlooks the house. He has a bird's-eye view into the apartment. Ken leaves home at about 8:30 every day, crosses the Swiss border, and then returns from work around seven o'clock. On the weekend he's sometimes joined by a woman, a French teacher from Bonneville, ten kilometers away. Tuesday is his most predictable day, with the strictest routine: he comes home earlier, goes straight back out to head to the gym, returns two hours later, spends about twenty minutes in the bathroom, then eats in front of the TV, dawdles on his computer for a while, and goes to bed. Let's go for Tuesday evening. Blake sends his client a message, using their code: "Monday, 8 pm?" One day earlier, two hours earlier. The client will have an alibi for Tuesday at 10 pm.

A week before the appointed day, Blake arranges for a pizza to be delivered to Ken's apartment. The delivery man rings the bell, Ken opens the door without a moment's hesitation and looks baffled as he talks to the pizza man, who leaves again, still holding his box. Blake doesn't need to see any more.

The following Tuesday, he personally pitches up carrying a pizza box. He studies the empty street for a moment, puts on anti-skid overshoes, checks his gloves and then waits awhile so that he can ring the bell just as Ken's coming out of the shower. Ken opens the door, wearing his robe, and sighs when he sees the pizza box in the delivery guy's hands. But before he has time to say anything the empty box falls to the ground and Blake jams the ends of two stun batons into his chest. The shock knocks Ken to his knees, Blake drops down with him and keeps up the pressure for ten seconds, until Ken stops moving. The manufacturers promised eight million volts: Blake tried out just one baton on himself and nearly passed out. He drags a dribbling, moaning Ken to the bathroom, gives him another zap for good measure, then in one horrifyingly violent move—that he's practiced ten times on coconuts—he grasps Ken's head between his hands, holding it by the temples and raising it up, then hurls it back with all his might: Ken's skull shatters against the side of the tub, and a diamond-shaped floor tile cracks from the force of the impact. Blood immediately starts to spread, viscous and scarlet as nail varnish, complete with its pleasant smell of hot rust. Ken's mouth stays open, inanely, his eyes wide, staring at the ceiling. Blake half opens his robe: the electric shocks have left no trace. He arranges the body as best he can to fit the hypothetical trajectory that gravity would have dictated following a tragic slip.

And just then, as he stands up and admires his work, he has a sudden, overwhelming urge to pee. It would never have occurred to him. Let's face it, assassins in films don't pee. It's so urgent that he even contemplates relieving himself in the toilet, at the expense of having to clean the whole thing thoroughly afterward. But if the cops take it into their heads to be just a teeny bit intelligent, or simply thorough, methodically following procedure, they'd find some DNA. Bound to. At least that's what Blake assumes. So, despite his pleading bladder, he continues with his plan, grimacing in agony. He picks up the soap, rubs it firmly against Ken's heel, crushes a trail of it onto the floor and throws it in line with the assumed slide: the soap ricochets and gets stuck behind the toilet. Perfect. Finding it will make the investigator's day, thrilled to have solved the enigma. Blake sets the shower to its highest temperature, turns it on, and—avoiding all contact with the steaming water—swivels the showerhead toward Ken's face and chest, then he leaves the bathroom.

Originally published in French as L'Anomalie in 2020 by Éditions Gallimard, Paris
Copyright ©2020 Éditions Gallimard
English translation copyright ©2021 Other Press