A lonely young woman, Mellie, in France, in a seaside town, and it’s raining when a bus arrives. Only one passenger alights. Where is he going, with his red bag, bright in the greyness? Mellie is alone in the house. The stranger forces his way in, rapes her. Why her? Why Mellie?  By midnight he is dead. Mellie, the victim,  has  killed the predator. The sea is the perfect place to lose a body.

Will it stay lost forever. Has she got away with it?

Later, Mellie is at a wedding. An enigmatic Harry Dobbs is there too. He is an American, and seems to know her secret, but not enough. He wants to know more. Hour by measured hour the man and the young woman circle one another, relentlessly, Who is the cat, who the mouse?

This is an extraordinarly novel. Written to a relentless rhythm, like a dance that can’t be brought to an end. The rhythm mirrors the strange hypnotic story, one which almost seems suspended in time. It has been made into a film several times, the first in 1970, starring Charles Bronson. The last, thus far  The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun starring Charlize Theron. It was a Sunday Times Top 100- Crime Novel.

It is extraordinary. Put time aside, read it in one gulp, though that’s the wrong.. You need each word, each phrase, each image so clear, the language so economic.

Linda Coverdale has done a cracking job with the translation of Marseille born Sebastien Japrisot’s Rider on the Rain. Japrisot  died in 2003. He was a screen writer, author, and film director. He was nicknamed The Graham Green of France. His book is a masterpiece.

Rider on the Rain by Sebastien Japrisot. pub Gallic Books.. pback. £8.99. Translated by Linda Coverdale.