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The name Michel Bussi may not be familiar to you, but the former geography professor is one of France’s bestselling and most decorated authors. After the Crash, first published in 2012, sold more than 700,000 copies in France alone, and has now been translated to English for the first time by Sam Taylor.

In 1980, an airplane traveling from Istanbul to Paris crashes in the Jura Mountains, leaving 168 passengers dead, and one miraculous survivor, a three-month-old baby girl. But there were two baby girls on the flight — Lyse-Rose de Carville, the heir to a great fortune, and Emilie Vitral, whose family operate a food truck by the seafront. As the crash took place before the introduction of DNA testing, there is no way to prove the identity of the child. The two families become ensnared in a nasty legal battle, and a private detective, Crédule Grand-Duc, is hired to solve the case. Much of the novel is given over to Grand-Duc’s private journal, in which he outlines the details of his eighteen year-long investigation. As he is about to commit suicide, Grand-Duc uncovers the truth… and is promptly murdered.

The Millennium trilogy proved that readers have an appetite for translated works, and French crime writing has finally escaped from the shadow cast by Stieg Larsson to experience a surge in popularity. Readers will be pleased to find such an original voice in Bussi’s novel, as he borrows elements from old-fashioned clue-puzzle mysteries to provide a breathtakingly suspenseful thriller. The truth is buried under a shoal of seemingly endless red herrings and intriguing subplots. We encounter “Lylie”, the girl at the centre of the mystery, only through descriptions by other characters, a device perhaps suitable for a woman unsure of her identity, but omitting her perspective seems like a missed opportunity. Unfortunately, the resolution doesn’t quite match the pace Bussi has maintained throughout, but the journey there is never anything less than extraordinary.