Three Days and a Life cover art

Three Days and a Life

Preview
LIMITED TIME OFFER

3 months free
Try for £0.00
£8.99/mo thereafter. Renews automatically. Terms apply. Offer ends 31 July 2025 at 23:59 GMT.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.

Three Days and a Life

By: Pierre Lemaitre, Frank Wynne - translator
Narrated by: Peter Noble
Try for £0.00

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Offer ends 31 July 2025 23:59 GMT. Cancel monthly.

Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

Confirm Purchase
Pay using card ending in
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.
Cancel

About this listen

In 1999, in the small provincial town of Beauval, France, twelve-year-old Antoine Courtin accidentally kills a young neighbor boy in the woods near his home. Panicked, he conceals the body and to his relief--and ongoing shame--he is never suspected of any connection to the child's disappearance.
But the boy's death continues to haunt him, shaping his life in unseen ways. More than a decade later, Antoine is living in Paris, now a young doctor with a fiancée and a promising future. On a rare trip home to the town he hates and fears, Antoine thoughtlessly sleeps with a beautiful young woman from his past. She shows up pregnant at his doorstep in Paris a few months later, insisting that they marry.

Meanwhile, the newly discovered body of Antoine's childhood victim means that the case has been reopened, and all of his old fears rush back. With the gravitational pull of his hometown strengthening its grip, Antoine may finally be forced to confront his past. Is he prepared to do what he must to keep his darkest secrets buried?
©2017 Editions Albin Michel (P)2017 WF Howes Ltd
Historical International Mystery & Crime Mystery Psychological Suspense Thriller & Suspense Fiction Disappearance

Listeners also enjoyed...

Blood Wedding cover art
Village of the Lost Girls cover art
The Great Swindle cover art
Blackout Obscura cover art
Dark Pines cover art
Midnight at Malabar House cover art
The Undiscovered Deaths of Grace McGill cover art
The Silence cover art
Winter Journey cover art
Extraordinary People cover art
When You Disappeared cover art
Sleep Sister cover art
Skin and Bones cover art
Guilty cover art
A Great Deliverance cover art
A Gift for Dying cover art

Critic reviews

"French crime maestro Pierre Lemaitre continues his upward movement in Three Days and a Life . . . This is literary crime writing of some distinction: a heady melange of Aldous Huxley and Robert Goddard."—The Guardian

"Thought-provoking and unsettling, Three Days And A Life is another work of genius from a master storyteller at the top of his game."—The Daily Express
"Taut character study and a vivid portrayal of an isolated community."—France Magazine
"Three Days and a Life was a fun, fast suspense novel that I very much enjoyed. I would definitely read more books by Pierre Lemaitre, who is known for getting into the minds of killers. That's exactly what he did with young Antoine, leaving the reader with a killer you couldn't help but care about."—Novel Visits
"Lemaitre has outdone himself. If you like great psychological novels, Three Days and a Life should be on your nightstand. Read it, savor, and read it again."
Andrew Gulli, Strand Magazine
"A complex experiment in the social infrastructure of a small French town, right and wrong, and the rawness of the family unit . . . A great book that generates a lot of thought-provoking questions."
Daily Republic
"Lemaitre is surely France's most elegant and imaginative crime writer."—The Times
"Three Days and a Life is excellent: A heartbreaking and masterful portrait of a man's life, marked by a childhood mistake."
Crime by the Book
"Lemaitre may be the best current French writer of crime fiction."
Financial Times
"No one is writing quirkier thrillers than Lemaitre, who gets inside the head of his unhinged protagonist with wicked delight while capturing the madness of the modern world. French favorite Lemaitre's novel, about a preteen on whom fortune smiles in the most devious ways after he accidentally kills a little boy, is a feverish, wickedly entertaining work."
Kirkus Reviews
All stars
Most relevant  
A well orchestrated story of an event in a small French town, and its ramifications. Pierre Lemaitre's story is unfolded in a way that may seem slow paced to some, but to me is a work of art. He leads through the story through Antoine in such a way that you feel that you have experienced the story from every perspective, and sensed every emotion. Peter Noble's narration is superb, adding to the pacing of the book and constantly reminding the listener that this is a story set is France, with French characters, attitudes and differences.
The story is a clever tale of foreboding, gradually unfolding until the very end. It is not as gory or "thrilling" as some of his other books, but is an immersive experience - by the end I hope that you will share my enthusiasm for this author. Enjoy !

An immersive tale of foreboding...

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.