Tomorrow the novel goes on sale in our country Sharko (Planet), by the French writer Franck Thilliez. I had the opportunity to interview him during his time in Valencia., invited by the Valencia Negra festival. Franck Thilliez (Annecy, 1973) He is a new technology engineer and author of several books, between them Hell train for red angel (2003), The chamber of the dead (2005), Honey Mourning (2006), The forest of shadows (2006), Phantom memory (2007), The Moebius ring (2008) y Fractures (2009). To the success of Syndrome E, In France, we must add that of its second part, Gataca. My thanks to the interpreter, Maria Jesus Plasencia, during the interview. GINÉS J. VERA
Lucie Hennebelle and Franck Sharko are in trouble: Lucie, outside of all legal procedures, has raided a private property on the outskirts of Paris and murdered the man who was investigating, Julien Ramirez. Although it was in self-defense, If he confesses what happened he will go to jail. But Sharko won't allow it.. In the course of the investigation, The police couple will discover that behind Ramírez there is a vampire sect that commits the most perverse atrocities. Not only will they find thirteen corpses from whom they have extracted every last drop of blood, They will have to endure the anguish of their companions discovering what they did. Lucie and Sharko will face each other, besides, to an unknown disease that the vampire sect deliberately spreads.
Sharko presents us with a curious reflection, that the murderer always takes a little bit of his victim with him. In this case, What did Franck Thilliez take from Sharko??
Sharko is the first character I have created in my writing, When I started writing I wanted to create a police character that was different from the police characters that already existed in the universe of literature.. But it is very difficult to create a character that is different because there are already many characters in literature and also some well-known ones such as Hercule Poirot or the great characters of North American crime novel writers.. So I wanted to create a police character., but at the same time he was very human, and that was not easy. So, Sharko is a very human character because he has also suffered a lot in his life., his suffering has been really intense. Sharko is a character who really likes his job and cannot help but practice his job even though it makes him suffer a lot.. That's why he's called Sharko., why shark, in English, He is a shark and he is like the sharks who clings to the killer's back and doesn't stop until he manages to catch him.. People like this type of character a lot because in addition to practicing his job, he is a very human character who has his problems like all humans have and then the public identifies with this type of character who has a human side that is also very great..
“The human being is a species like the others – we read in his novel –, He was fighting for his survival and Sharko was no exception.”. This novel is not just about survival., It was also present in his previous novel Pandemic.
Yeah, I have been very concerned about the issue of evolution. About how species have evolved on Earth throughout history. Afterwards I have focused on the human being, but to focus on the human being, For human beings to continue existing, that means that throughout thousands and thousands of years of history they have had the ability to survive., the ability to stay. But at the same time that it has an enormous capacity for survival, it also has an enormous capacity for destruction., In the last hundred years we have seen with industrialization, deforestation, Like many processes, man has an enormous capacity to destroy. In my novels there are police characters like Sharko who also have that duality, let's say, of destruction and one wonders, and that is what I want that question to enter into my novels: how have we been able to get here with that capacity for destruction that has been seen throughout the history of humanity?.
And now, at the speed at which our society is going, We have no choice but to run a lot if we do not want to lose pace at the rate at which technology advances., the advancement of science, there is no choice but to run. We are in a permanent need to run.
Among the scientific curiosities of this novel we discover the properties of the blue blood of the limulids. The blue gold of this species of marine arthropods is of great interest to the pharmaceutical industry. Or that hemoglobin from sand-eating marine worms that is already being talked about for certain kidney grafts.
The novel talks about blood, It is the scientific topic that I now want to deal with in all aspects. We have the history of blood, how blood groups were discovered, all blood related issues. Blood is something we find everywhere, in mythology, in all matters of vampirism or satanic rites. Also the entire scientific part of what blood represents today on a scientific level, So doing my research and writing the novel I found this whole issue of the Limulids, which is an issue that fascinated me and I really liked and that I want to introduce into the novel.. Then I also discovered the importance of blood and its connection with the pharmaceutical industries, which have a very important economic challenge there.. I discovered this whole Limulid blood thing., that a liter of this blood, although I don't remember how much it was worth, is worth much more than gold..
