The Intern

The body of a young woman, a juror in a criminal trial, is found near the courthouse. A second juror confides in Constance and Boris that the victim had complained about the way the presiding judge abused his authority to influence the jury during deliberations.

The body of a 35-year-old woman is found behind garbage bins, a few steps from Saint-Charles Station. It soon becomes clear she had been living in Marseille under a false identity for years. Her fingerprints match those of a young girl who mysteriously disappeared in 2000 near Nice, but no one seems to know the young woman’s true story.

In sailboat cabin lies the body of a man in his fifties, with an open wound to his temple. Constance, unsettled, recognizes the victim as a childhood friend of Barth’s. In the pocket of his jacket is an invitation to a cocktail party the previous evening at the town hall. Constance says Barth was there too--though he never mentioned it to her.

The body of a young PE teacher is found in an underground supermarket car park, killed by a violent blow to the back of the head. Jeremy seemed to be a happily married father of a six-month-old baby, but the investigation leads the judges into the world of teachers, pupils, and the harsh reality of the school playground.

The judges take on the case of the murder of Lionel Kaplan, a well-known local entrepreneur who made carbon fiber composite hulls for racing yachts--violently beaten to death just a few dozen meters from his company premises.

While an amateur theatre troupe made up of residents from the village of Grandagne rehearses on stage in the main square, one of the cast, Pierre Tessier, dies of poisoning. Who tampered with his glass, meant to be filled with wine?

The body of a teenage girl is found next to her bicycle on a remote path, evidently the victim of a hit-and-run. Her clothes and bag are intact, but she has a few signs of assault. Her parents say she had no reason to be there in the middle of the night--she was meant to spend the evening at her best friend’s. So what happened?

On the banks of a river, the lifeless body of a woman in her fifties is spotted drifting by a fisherman. There’s nothing to identify her except a badge found at the bottom of her jacket pocket. The “VM+” logo on it leads to a Marseille company running a psychic hotline where the victim worked. Did she know she was in danger?