Colorado, 1968. On New Year's Eve, twelve inmates escape from Old Lonesome prison, situated in a small Colorado town surrounded by the Rocky Mountains. The event shakes its inhabitants, and a veritable war machine is set in motion to bring back the prisoners, dead or alive. Hot on their trail are the prison guards and an expert human tracker, local journalists anxious to get a good story, and a marijuana trafficker determined to find her cousin before the cops. For their part, the escapees, now separated, follow different tracks in the middle of the night and under a merciless blizzard, an uncontrollable wave of violence spreading in their wake.
Available: France | Germany | Spain
French translation by Jacques Mailhos.
"A great novel of the human condition, where despite crime and violence, there is beauty, redemption, to discover, to seek." — François Busnel, La Grande Librairie
"There is, in painting, the 'outrenoir' of Pierre Soulages and, in literature, that of Benjamin Whitmer, similarly incised with flashes of light." — Macha Séry, Le Monde
"A haunting novel." — Philippe Blanchet, Le Figaro Magazine
"Benjamin Whitmer is a goldsmith of noir." — Clara Dupont-Monod, Radio France
"Évasion is a kind of Christmas tale, macabre and pagan." — Laurent Chalumeau, Radio France
"These characters nourish your empathy as a reader in this race slowed down by the natural elements. To this, the author gives poetry, tiny riches, intimacy, and humor too. Yes yes, you laugh sometimes. You choke right behind. This is the price of escape." — Juliette Arnaud, Radio France
"Reading Évasion sometimes feels like driving at breakneck speed on a frozen highway in a beat-up Ford against a backdrop of death metal at full volume." — Jerome Dupuis, L'Express
"Disquieting, haunting." — Loup Besmond de Senneville, La Croix
"Évasion is a stationary road movie, a pure and superb deception." — Alain Léauthier, Marianne
"Benjamin Whitmer turns the human condition to acid, between mad love and visceral hatred." — Livre Hebdo
"A masterful romance of love and hate." — Elise Lepine, GQ
"A suffocated narrative where, in the icy Colorado night, each of the characters, whether good or bad, comes face to face with their nightmares. Because for the author, despair stifles everything else and the reader, taken by the throat, has no other choice but to follow him in the narration of this descent into hell." — Lou-Eve Popper, Lire
"A masterful novel." — Frantz Hoez, L'Obs
"In this sparkling tale of darkness, Benjamin Whitmer depicts a humanity as wild as the surrounding nature." — Paris Match
"Évasion, by Benjamin Whitmer, is a total success." — Bernard Poirette, Europe 1
"It's hyper-paced, it's breathless, it's very well built, you don't get bored for a minute. Whitmer gives us one of the great thrillers of this season." — Guillaume Vittu, France Info
"It's black country, not reading for lazy people, it stumbles, it fights and that's why it's a hit." — Michel Dufranne, RTBF
"Whitmer saves what remains to be saved: the indomitable melancholy of the margins." — Le Un
"Évasion is a terrifying noir novel that gives a scathing lesson of life in hostile territory." — Thierry Boillot, L'Alsace
"Hell behind closed doors. With this third novel, Benjamin Whitmer asserts himself as a master of the noir novel." — Anne Lessard, Le Télégramme
"The term noir novel seems to have been coined for Whitmer whose uncompromising universe delves into the savagery of human nature. With this choral novel, he achieves a double feat: giving as much depth to the secondary characters as to the leaders — pursued or pursuers — and translating the confinement beyond the walls of a prison. Simply masterful." — Le Courrier de l'Ouest
"Whitmer is an author without concession in his subject, which perfectly illustrates the black novel (with him, even the snowflakes are gray). He denounces the violence inherent in a certain category of an American population entrenched behind puritanical and traditionalist values." — L'Est Republicain
"In the spirit of Jim Harrison, the American Benjamin Whitmer brilliantly draws large spaces and small men. Horribly delicious." — Karin Cherloneix, Ouest France
"A jewel of a noir novel." — Le Journal de Montréal
