Alligator Sense

Ghosts of the past will come looking for you.
Wherever you want to flee.

2000, Wytago, Vermont.

Larry Nowak tries to look in the mirror as little as possible: his reflection, in fact, is but a pale memory of who he was. Six and a half years spent in a hospital bed in a sort of limbo of which he remembers little or nothing. And the only solution he found to escape from what awaited him upon awakening was to flee. Wytago, Vermont is small enough and far enough away that he thinks he can leave his painful past behind. Here, Larry tries to rebuild his daily life, to set up a new veterinary clinic, to make new friends, to no longer be just “The new kid in town” for everyone. But in a small town, everyone knows everything about everyone. And so it’s easy to discover his addiction to drugs, his drinking to excess, his terrible mood swings. And also to discover that there’s something in his past that he wants to keep hidden in every way. Then, when a boy is found lifeless, attention is immediately focused on him. Even before a real investigation begins, Larry has already become the perfect culprit, the scapegoat on which to lay the blame of a small town that considers itself immaculate and which hides its shadows behind the houses’ repainted doors.

• Precise characterisation.
• Growing tension and a feeling of unease permeate the entire novel.
• An atmosphere typical of the American province.