La malédiction du lys (2023)

Hervé Landry, a real estate developer and candidate for mayor of Bordeaux, is found murdered, naked, branded on the shoulder with a fleur-de-lis, with a leather muzzle over his face and a rope around his neck. The investigation is assigned to Captain Clémence Lacoste, accompanied by an intelligence specialist from Paris because of the case’s political sensitivity. Clémence Lacoste and Antoine Rosy discover that, three weeks before his death, Landry had argued with Anta Gomis, president of Ameno (the Association for Black Memory), whose aim is to fight discrimination, call for a duty to remember, and promote people from diverse backgrounds. Anta Gomis had shown him documents she had received from the United States, including a list of 18 Bordeaux merchants who had made their fortunes through the slave trade. The Landry family’s name headed the list, but the documents were stolen from her three days later. From Gomis’s explanation, the investigators realize that before his death Hervé Landry was subjected to the punishments inflicted on slaves accused of theft on plantations. They also fear for the safety of the descendants of Bordeaux’s 18 prominent families who owe their fortunes to the slave trade. And, indeed, a few days later, Baptiste Moulinas, a close associate of Landry, is found murdered in the same way, hanged from the mast of a carrelet fishing platform.