A suspenseful investigation that explores family obsessions, unspoken truths, and fractured memories, all set against a backdrop of menace and danger.

France, 2010

After a car accident that nearly cost her her life, best-selling novelist Cécile Varennes sees her world turned upside down once again: her father’s car is found burned to a crisp deep in the woods. The investigation concludes it was a simple accident… but a suitcase hidden in the deceased’s house tells a very different story.

Inside are dozens of newspaper clippings about accidents, disappearances, and tragedies that occurred along Route 7—the same road where Cécile’s mother and younger brother perished thirty years earlier.

To understand what her father was tracking, Cécile embarks on an obsessive road trip along the Blue Route, alongside Tristan, a former foreign correspondent now working as a local newspaper reporter in the Nièvre region. A man whose life hides many tragedies, which may well collide with the intrepid novelist’s investigations… Buried truths, a forgotten serial killer: what secrets does this legendary road hide?

A journalist and novelist, Sophie Loubière has long divided her professional life between writing and radio.  In 1999, her first novel was published in the “Le Poulpe” series. Several novels followed, including L’Enfant aux cailloux (Fleuve noir, 2011), a psychological thriller that brought her international acclaim—translated into English in some twenty countries, the novel received five literary awards—then Cinq cartes brûlées (Fleuve noir, 2020), winner of the 2021 Landerneau Crime Novel Prize, and Obsolète (Belfond, 2024), which allowed her to expand beyond her crime fiction audience with a unique, dark literary dystopia.