A detective in a wheelchair. An extraterrestrial who blends right in. A city drowning in fog. Meet the characters of Oscar’s Notebook, Mr Schaka’s detective series set in Liège, with no spoilers about the plots.
Oscar Blanc, the one who keeps the notebook
Oscar Blanc is not his real name. He fell from the sky one stormy night into the woods of Sart-Tilman, with no way of getting home, and he has learned to live among humans: their péket, their boulets sauce lapin, and all those rules they never write down anywhere. He can change his face and go unnoticed, almost always.
He’s the one telling the story. And that’s the whole charm of the series: a gentle, loyal narrator with impeccable manners, who watches the people of Liège with the curiosity of an anthropologist from very, very far away. He takes notes on everything, from haggling over a cauliflower at the market to the strange habits humans have around their dead. And his planet still isn’t answering.
Victor Lenoir, the detective
A former police inspector, Victor gets around in a wheelchair, which has never stopped him from going anywhere. His eye is merciless: he saw through Oscar in five minutes, on a platform at Guillemins station. And instead of turning him in, he decided to keep him.
Victor solves the cases the Liège police can’t make sense of. He thinks fast, talks little and never lets go of a lead. Oscar handles the rest: he climbs the stairs, puts on disguises, and goes where a detective in a wheelchair would hardly go unnoticed. “I take care of the stairs and the awkward questions,” as he puts it.
Inspector Delvaux and the others
Orbiting around them is Inspector Delvaux of the Liège police, who grumbles a lot but always comes back knocking on Victor’s door when a case is beyond him. Then there are the people you meet again from one book to the next, and someone, in the shadows, who is taking a very close interest in Oscar. We won’t say any more.
A duo in the tradition of the great detectives
The genius who deduces and the sidekick who tells the tale: it’s a classic formula. Except that here, the sidekick comes from another planet, and he’s the one who sees humans as puzzles. The result: old-school mysteries, somewhere between fog, mystery and humor, where you can be right on both sides at once… and still have to choose.
In what order should you read the series?
- Book 1: The Man with a Face of Water (“The Man with the Water Face”). The first meeting, a drowned man who smells of linden blossom, saints stolen in the fog and a neon night in the Carré.
- Book 2: The Empty Wall (“The Empty Wall”). Liège’s Picasso vanishes from the Boverie museum.
- Book 3: The Waters of the Vesdre (“The Waters of the Vesdre”). A radio ham found dead below Franchimont Castle, in the Vesdre valley.
- Book 4: The Silence of the Fagnes. A little girl lost in the snow of the High Fens, from Spa to the Signal de Botrange.
- Book 5: currently being written.
Each book is a complete investigation that can be read on its own. But a common thread runs from one notebook to the next, so it’s best to start with the first.
The book
The Man with a Face of Water, The Empty Wall, The Waters of the Vesdre and The Silence of the Fagnes are out now in English as ebooks. Explore the series and the summaries of all four books.
