Les Carnets de Darwin #2

A frightened young woman — wide-eyed, disheveled, pressed against a shadowed brick wall — anchors the cover of this second volume in Ocaña and Runberg's atmospheric series from Le Lombard. The ghostly wisps of smoke or mist curling around her only deepen the sense of dread that the subtitle La Mort d'une Bête ("The Death of a Beast") promises. A brooding, gothic mood permeates every corner of this 2011 entry, making it a compelling piece of French-language sequential storytelling.