Le suspendu de Conakry

How can Aurel Timescu possibly be a French Consul? With his Romanian accent, his 1930s style and his past as a bar pianist, he seems hopelessly out of place, and is stuck in Guinea, whose heat he can scarcely bear. Then the one thing that can still rouse him occurs: an inexplicable crime. A white yachtsman is found hanged from his mast, and the murder would go unpunished were it not for Aurel’s chance to wage his great fight against injustice. The first case of a wonderfully offbeat anti-hero, by the Goncourt-winning author and former diplomat.