For fans of Stephen King’s Misery and Jo Nesbø’s The Snowman comes an engrossing thriller about a monster who becomes a victim and a victim who becomes a monster. From Patrick Senécal, the Quebec author who has sold over a million books worldwide.

One sunny fall day, Dr. Bruno Hamel’s life changes forever.

His beloved seven-year-old daughter, Jasmine, is the victim of a tragic crime. Grief-stricken, Hamel sets in play a meticulous plan. He will kidnap the man responsible for his daughter’s death and make him pay horribly for what he has done. He manages to ambush a police transport and disappear with his target.

But Hamel hasn’t accounted for Hervé Mercure, a detective with a troubled past who becomes certain he can track down Hamel by studying clues in his past—and in the increasingly unsettling phone calls Hamel makes to his partner, Sylvie.

Both riveting and provocative, this daring thriller is an enthralling meditation on what it means to be human—and to battle the monster within and without.

Patrick Senecal was born in 1967 in Drummondville, Quebec. He began writing in high school and self-published his short fiction while there. In 1994 he published his first novel, 5150 rue des Ormes, and he has since published dozens of novels, thick and dark, many winning prizes and several becoming films. Patrick published his first novella, Contre Dieu, in 2010, and now Contre Dieu has come to the Anglophone masses with a masterful translation.

Patrick Senécal's profile page

Howard Scott is a Montreal literary translator who works with fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. His translations include works by Madeleine Gagnon, science-fiction writer Élisabeth Vonarburg, and Canada’s Poet Laureate, Michel Pleau. Scott received the Governor General’s Literary Award for his translation of Louky Bersianik’s The Euguelion. The Great Peace of Montreal of 1701, by Gilles Havard, which he co-translated with Phyllis Aronoff, won the Quebec Writers’ Federation Translation Award. A Slight Case of Fatigue, by Stéphane Bourguignon, another co-translation with Phyllis Aronoff, was a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award. Howard Scott is a past president of the Literary Translators’ Association of Canada.

Howard Scott's profile page

Phyllis Aronoff, a Montrealer born and bred, translates from French to English, solo or with co-translator Howard Scott. She has translated fiction, poetry, memoirs, and works in the humanities by authors from Québec and France. Among her recent translations are Message Sticks / Tshissinuatshitakana, poems by Innu writer Joséphine Bacon, and novels (co-translated with Howard Scott) by Rima Elkouri and Edem Awumey. Her translations have won several prizes, including the Jewish Book Award for Fiction and, with Howard Scott, the Quebec Writers’ Federation Translation Prize and the Governor General’s Literary Award for Translation. Phyllis is a past president of the Literary Translators’ Association of Canada and has represented translators on the Public Lending Right Commission of Canada.

Phyllis Aronoff's profile page

“This is very well done. It owes nothing to Stephen King and, as far as I’m concerned, it is in nothing inferior to Stephen King.”

Radio-Canada – Indicatif Présent

“A Québec author who is a master at unsettling our emotions and taking us very far into the pit of madness.”

Le Soleil

“An author that no other equals in his ability not only to keep the readers riveted, but also to plunge them in an unsettling state from where they don’t wake up before having devoured the book to its very last page.”

L’Oeil regional

“A visceral thriller propelled by the seething, heartbreaking passion of revenge. Senécal holds nothing back, which is what makes reading him feel so dangerous.”

Andrew Pyper, bestselling author of The Only Child and The Demonologist

“What a great discovery! Patrick Senécal’s universe is simply terrifying, for our greatest enjoyment! Reading this very talented author guarantees lots of extremely pleasurable shivers!”

CHEY – Rock Détente

“He excels at telling stories, revealing in the building-up of that ultra-precise mechanism which is that of the thriller, oiling each and every cog, listening to the implacable ticking of the words which — well, it must be said, he uses to manipulate the reader.”

La Presse

“Senécal writes very efficiently. Action, rhythm, taking hold of the reader, are more important to him than stylistic flourishes. All the better for us.”

Nuit Blanche

“With Seven Days, English-speaking readers are going to discover what millions of French readers already know: Patrick Senécal is the real deal. I hope they enjoy this dementedly wonderful book as much as I did, but be warned: Here there be Tygers.”

Craig Davidson, author of The Saturday Night Ghost Club

“Without imitating Stephen King’s style, Patrick Senécal manages to instill as much interest in the reader as does the master of American horror stories.”

Québec français

“A tight little drama.”

The Globe and Mail

“Senécal masterfully sets up the thriller’s efficient mechanics, a well-tempered mix of suspense and terror which has made its success. His books are full of tortured and excessive beings, outwardly strong but inwardly tormented. This is the reason why his literary universe is so seductive and so unsettling, and keeps us on the edge of our seats.”

Accès Laurentides

Praise for Patrick Senécal

“Senécal is currently Québec’s best horror author.”

CFOU FM – Le Voyageur insolite

“Senécal asks big questions about the nature of humanity.”

Publishers Weekly

“The author’s best quality is that he doesn’t flinch from his subject and goes all the way, with all the unsparing, morbid details.”

Lectures

“Both highly moral and absolutely terrifying. A revenge fantasy enacted with perfect, ambiguous realism.”

Nathan Ripley, bestselling author of Find You in the Dark

Praise for Seven Days

“Senécal is concerned with big questions here: what is the nature of evil . . . What are the limits of grief and sanity? Is revenge ultimately futile or purgative? . . . The issues Senécal grapples with are urgent, especially in our current fraught political moment.”

Quill & Quire