The Great Swindle by Pierre Lemaitre; trans Frank Wynne, book review

Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter for all the latest entertainment news and reviews Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. The purpose is not to hide his gaping wound, but to express an idealised self: “a pretty pink mouth set in a slightly condescending sneer, with two faded autumn leaves glued high up on the cheeks that looked like tears”. The exhumations militaires involved transferring hundreds of thousands of bodies from scattered battlefield graves to vast necropolises of tidy decorum – at great profit for the private contractors involved. When parents visit the grave, do they dig it up to check that it's their body and not someone else's?” Like the best villains, his cold logic is hard to fault Édouard and Albert start their own commemoration racket marketing ghastly war memorials on spec. Édouard, an artiste manqué with an instinct for shocking the bourgeoisie, also understands how to sell monuments to the bourgeoisie: “Not everyone is gifted enough to turn out something ugly”.