Death From The Woods by Brigitte Aubert (translated by David L Koral) Hodder & Stoughton (£5.99)

IMAGINE if you will that you are a publisher and an eager young author pops their head round your door with a fat, dog-eared manuscript tucked under their arm.

OK, they say, this is the story of a blind, mute quadriplegic woman who teams up with a strange little girl to track down a murderer known as Death From The Woods.

Would you have published the book? Would you have even let the author park their bum in your office for longer than it took to call security and have them booted unceremoniously out into the street?

Probably not. Let's face it, a blind, mute quadriplegic amateur sleuth does seem to be taking the search for a new twist on the traditional detective genre a wee bit too far.

A disabled detective would be pushing the envelope, but a completely paralysed woman with no way of communicating whatsoever is pushing the envelope up hill with your nose in a hurricane.

In other words, this book shouldn't work. But it does; it really, really does.

Death From The Woods is the first novel from French author Brigitte Aubert to be translated into English. She is widely acclaimed in her own country as France's most talented thriller writer, but has yet to develop a reputation overseas.

If there is any justice, this will be the book to change all that because it is quite simply the best thriller I have read in a long, long time. It is genuinely thrilling from start to finish, the plotting is faultless, the characters are hauntingly believable (especially - and perhaps most surprisingly - Elise, the quadriplegic detective) and the pace is breathtakingly relentless.

Buy this book now. And then, when you have got your breath back, join me as I march into the publisher's office to demand more translations from this fantastic French author.