User:Cdeblik/Luc Deflo

Luc Deflo is a Flemish author. His psychological crime stories tell the story about the detective duo, Bosmans and Deleu. Currently his books are being published and sold throughout the Netherlands, Germany, and Israel. He has been nominated 5 times for the Hercules Poirot Prize, Belgian's most esteemed award for crime/detective stories. In 2008, he won the Prize for his novel, titled, "Pitbull."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

PREVIOUS PUBLISHING HISTORY

Currently his books are being published and sold throughout the Netherlands, Germany, and Israel, and has been nominated 5 times for the Hercules Poirot Prize, Belgian's most esteemed award for crime/detective stories. In 2008, he won the Prize for his novel, titled, "Pitbull." In 2009, Deflo was nominated for a "Golden Strop" for "Lust" in the Netherlands. The thrillers "Naked Souls" and "Creeping Poison" are now being made into big screen movies by Martin Lagestee Movies, one of the major producers in the Netherlands.

For a decade now, Luc Deflo's novels have ranked at the top of the list next to other well-known writers such as Henning Mankell ("The Chinaman") and Khaled Hosseini ("The Kite Runner", and "A Thousand Splendid Suns"). Ever since Mr. Deflo became nominated for his debut novel, "Naked Souls" in 1999, he is one of the most popular Belgian authors in his genre. He consistently outperforms other marketable writers by ranking in the top 10 of the Best Sellers List for months at a time in Belgium.

His psychological crime novels are very much along the lines of that of other renowned authors like Nicky French, Henning Mankell, and Stieg Larsson.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

- Naked Souls (1999)

- Frozen Heart (2000)

- Bait (2001)

- Short Circuit (2002)

- Creeping Poison (2003)

- Innocent (2004)

- Copycat (2005)

- Defenseless (2005)

- Breathless (2006)

- Whores (2006)

- Vanished (2007)

- Fear (2007)

- Pitbull (2008)

- Lust (2009)

- Schadows (2009)

PLOT SYNOPSIS: PITBULL – AN AWARD WINNING PSYCHOLOGICAL CRIME NOVEL

Two men are killing time at the bar. The reserved but imposing Pieter Ghekiere and Benjamin Delaedt, a slight humdrum family man. Ghekiere, a manager, has just been fired and feels socially obsolete and discarded. His greatest fear is to waste away at home. With "Two" Jennies, his fat nagging bitch of a wife, who belittles him at every opportunity. For Delaedt things are different. He has a mistress. A young African woman. She, literally, infuses color into a dull life with few prospects left. But Delaedt has a huge problem. He has promised the girl heaven on earth. But now she has come to collect. She has seen through his empty promises and is threatening to go to his wife. Delaedt is desperate. And wasted. At that moment he makes a dire pledge. 'Pieter? If you kill my mistress then I'll deal with Two Jennies. No motive. No crime'.

When Delaedt wakes up the next morning, his life goes on as usual… but Mechelen, the provincial town, in which he lives, is roughly shaken out of its sleep. Melody Mutola, a young single Senegalese woman, is found by her mother. Murdered. So gruesome is the scene that inspector Jos Bosmans, an seasoned justice of the peace,  does everything in his power to throw off the press and prevent panic from breaking loose.

Inspector Bosmans is fighting a race against time. He has found no trail, no clues, no motive. At the end of his wits he seeks out his old friend detective Dirk Deleu. Detective Deleu, an emotional mess, is divorced, can not get his ex-wife out of his mind, is concerned about his children and worries about the sort of life he can offer Nadia Mendonck, his girlfriend. Yet, despite everything, the task presented to him by inspector Bosmans is right up his alley: to 'Crawl into the skin of the beast. To think what he thinks. Feel what he feels.'

Detective Deleus' ability to penetrate into the psyche of the murderer, evoking the murder in all its cruel perversion, leads him to a suspect: Benjamin Delaedt, who secretly maintained regular correspondence with Melody. Delaedt is arrested. He has an alibi. The police remain suspicious but, "for the time being", have to let him go. One day later his body is found floating in the river. Was it suicide? The autopsy is inconclusive.

Just as the trail grows cold and the case is closed, a new murder takes place and a new book begins. A parable, described from the obsessive perspective of the unleashed Pieter Ghekiere. A raw sweeping account of an impassive individual, increasingly seeking excess. He does not attempt to justify his gruesome actions. But he doesn't need to. The smell of blood, the metallic shine of broken eyes, the thirst for power, the delight in senseless destruction, that is what satiates Ghekiere, no longer restrained by society's codes or by any moral conscience. The reader is confronted with Ghekiere's inner drives, the social passion play surrounding his actions and our own fragility and innocence which force us to look inside ourselves, turning all readers into potential murderers.

Ghekiere does in fact realize that he has crossed a line. But that line is paper thin and blurred. And just like detective Deleu, he too is caught in a trap from which no one emerges unscathed. The two are playing the timeless game of hunter and prey. But in a world where good and evil are no longer absolutes, it is often unclear who is the cat and who is the mouse. On top of that, Ghekiere is cunning. Sophisticated. And anything but derelict. He can count on the support of his brother Ken, the most renowned judge in the country. A man who stands above all reproach and who doesn't see, or refuses to see, his brother for what he really is – a bloodthirsty beast.

Ghekiere and detective Deleu each try to stay one step ahead of the other by penetrating the other's mind, which confronts them with choices a "normal" person can not make. With time, the similarities between the two men become increasingly clear. And the differences more obscure. Now, it's Nadia Mendonck's move. Detective Deleu's girlfriend wants to protect him from himself and tries to lure Ghekiere out from under his rock herself by appealing to his last shreds of humanity. Ghekiere sees what Mendonck is up to and effortlessly turns the tables on her. He uses her to deliver his final blow to detective Deleu.

Yet, in the end the good guy wins. Or does he? Let's just say that Ghekiere gets caught. Not killed. But wasn't he dead already? Or maybe … he is the only one that's truly alive.