A story. [A Lapse in Judgment by Denis Robert]

A translated work published back in January of this year, A Lapse in Judgement is a story. With the majority of the story told in flashback format and the ill-placed context of a visit from detective looking into an old case spurring on said flashback, the question with this story is why. If you're looking for a happy or neatly tied up ending to a story, this isn't it. With a lot of philosophical type questions raised, this seems like what you would imagine if someone told you, "here, a French graphic novel."

The character actions were really weird throughout. Everyone's in a toxic environment where they feel betrayed and contribute in the formation of someone else's toxic environment. Everyone's cheating. Age is most contextualized in the female characters present. Nary a younger male character, but the young female character is inappropriately close to the grown male protagonist. Murder is casual. Is there someone I'm supposed to empathize with? Because I empathize with none in fact.

The ending was a bit obvious, but still enjoyable as a twist. Still, said twist turns my stomach, for many reasons. If I had this book around it would definitely be a conversation starter. Would I actively recommend this to someone? No, not really. Maybe if they wanted something that felt like a crime noir story in a graphic novel format. This really felt like a novel, but I saw it more like episodes of a TV show. I guess I'm most comfortable giving this 3 stars.