Since joining Fleuve Éditions in 2023, Sonja Delzongle has been constantly reinventing herself. After Thanatea, a unique narrative on death, and Black as the Storm, released simultaneously by Pocket, she returns at the beginning of this year with Apnea, an underwater thriller as fascinating as it is suffocating.
Lukas Berger is ready to break the world record for free diving in a place as mythical as it is dangerous: the Blue Hole, an abyss located on the shores of the Red Sea in Egypt, renowned and feared by all divers. There, he is accompanied by Claire, his wife, Juliet, the team doctor, and Amir, his coach. Everything is in place for the record to be broken.
But Lukas does not surface from the Blue Hole. He disappears. Only his watch is found attached to a safety line. A tragic accident, like the one that cost his father his life at the same place thirty years ago. However, the discovery of another diver’s mutilated body a few days later challenges this theory.
Claire is determined to uncover the truth about her partner’s disappearance.
Breathtaking Thriller in Troubled Waters
After Charente-Maritime and lightning, Sonja Delzongle takes her readers to Egypt, to the depths of the sea, tracing the footsteps of a diving couple. In this first part, the author skillfully conveys the inherent tensions of free diving, the fascination as well as the danger of this extreme sport. We understand its codes and risks but also the excitement and adrenaline.
In this new thriller, structured in three parts, Sonja Delzongle quickly presents an unexpected first twist that allows for the appearance of a new character: Albane, a private detective whose mentor is none other than Hanah Baxter, the recurring heroine of the author’s early thrillers.
Thus, after descending to the bottom of the Blue Hole and overturning the situation, Sonja Delzongle plunges readers into Lukas’s past and particularly into his ambiguous relationships with Ana, his mother. In this second part, we explore Lukas’s early years, where everything took root…
With this multi-layered thriller, Sonja Delzongle once again masters the elements to enrich her narrative. Apnea is a thriller read relentlessly where the omnipresent suspense will sometimes take the reader by the throat, urging them to continue reading.