Sébastien Le Jean
Numéro 17Number 17288 pages. April 2024. World rights available
FICTION
DETECTIVE NOVELS - THRILLERS - NOIR
Le jour de Noël, à Paris, un jeune homme est retrouvé mort après une chute du sixième étage de son immeuble. Pour les policiers du secteur, c’est un accident, au pire un suicide. Pour Ronan Sénéchal, commandant à la brigade criminelle, c’est un cadeau du destin. Depuis le fiasco de sa précédente enquête, il n’est plus que l’ombre de lui-même. S’il parvenait à prouver qu’il s’agit d’un assassinat et à démasquer le tueur, il pourrait retrouver l’estime de sa hiérarchie et de ses collègues. L’enquête officieuse qu’il entame en solo prend rapidement une tournure inquiétante : l’étudiant assassiné s’intéressait de près à un groupe complotiste, L’Hydre. Sénéchal plonge alors dans le monde cauchemardesque des théories conspirationnistes, des fausses nouvelles et des vidéos ultra-violentes pour identifier le maître à penser du réseau, l’insaisissable Numéro 17.
Sébastien Le Jean, âgé de trente-huit ans, est amateur de littérature noire et policière depuis sa jeunesse, il apprécie particulièrement les ouvrages qui nous tendent un miroir sur le monde dans lequel nous vivons. La montée en puissance de la menace des groupuscules survivalistes ne lui a pas échappé.
On Christmas Day, the body of a young student is found at the foot of a Paris apartment building. While the fall from his sixth- floor apartment could be the result of murder, the crime squad quickly rules out that theory. But when called to the scene, the commander of the Paris criminal brigade, Ronan Sénéchal, doesn’t agree. In his search of the victim’s apartment, he finds a USB stick containing encrypted information about a mysterious group of conspiracy theorists called the Hydra and a video of an extremely violent execution. He manages to organize a reconstruction which confirms the murder theory to be the right one. Sidelined by his superiors since going off the rails in a case that led to the death of his own wife, he decides to conduct enquiries on the margins of official investigations. It is then that Sénéchal plunges into the twisted world of conspiracy theorists: from forums that circulate nightmarish videos to fake news mills in Macedonia, by way of a bookshop overflowing with revisionist publications. It will be a painstaking journey to identify the mastermind behind the organization, the elusive Number 17. And for Sénéchal, it will be a long road to get his life back on track.
Sébastien Le Jean, thirty-eight years old, is an avid reader of «noir» literature and crime fiction, he particularly values works that hold a mirror up to the society we live in. His first fast-paced thriller, Le Grand effondrement, looks at survivalism. With Number 17, he plunges into the Dark Web on the trail of the fabricators of conspiracies.
"Sébastien Le Jean makes us worry about what we might have thought improbable. (...) Captivating!" The Telegram
«Numéro 17 questions major societal issues without neglecting the importance of fiction and reading pleasure.»
Sébastien Le Jean invited on Radio Libertaire.
“Driven by a thrilling rhythm, with burning context, powerful writing, well-defined characters, this story is not read, it devours!” Blogs.mediapart
“A Breathtaking Novel”” MCPolar31
“Between conspiracy theories and fake news factories in Macedonia, the writer keeps us on our toes until a rocambolesque end, a real contemporary Fort Chabrol.” Current Values
“A hectic, chaotic, undulating journey.” K-Libre