Father Yves-Marie Lequin is a well-known figure in and around Nice. Now the multi-talented man of the cloth has added a new string to his bow.
If your idea of a Dominican friar writing a book involves gentle meditations on faith or pious commentary on scripture, you haven’t met Father Yves-Marie yet. While the Nice-based chaplain to the artists does have an impressive track record of writing philosophical essays and spiritual poetry, his recently published debut whodunnit Du sang à Moulinet (Blood in Moulinet) is a thriller that opens with a massive pool of human blood covering the floor of a mountain chapel, and cryptic inscriptions on the walls written in that same blood. And the gore doesn’t get lighter from here.
Video via Yves-Marie Lequin YouTube channel
Has the good priest been possessed by evil forces? Spoiler: far from it.
Who is Father Yves-Marie Lequin?
The French have a saying “l’habit ne fait pas le moine”, translated as “Clothes do not make the man”. This takes on a very different twist when it comes to this renaissance man. As an ordained priest, the chasuble is of course his professional attire. His faith runs as deep as his convictions. But he has never fit the classic priestly mould. He is an artist, a painter, a writer, a philosopher, and has a PhD in psychology on top of it. He was born in France but spent his childhood and youth in Togo and Ivory Coast before studying in London, Leicester, Louvain, Toulouse, and Paris. That alone makes for someone with a unique world view.
Since 2011, he has served as Chaplain to the Artists of the Diocese of Nice, organizing the annual Messe des Artistes on Ash Wednesday at Saint Pierre d’Arène. This man of the Church is as comfortable in galleries as in sacristies, as at ease on social media as at the pulpit, and he sees it all as a normal and essential part of his ministry.
And he is a Dominican – the Order of urbane, learned and contemplative teachers who encourage independent thinking. Unsurprising therefore that he ventures into territory that may at first glance not fall under the Catholic umbrella. But as you will see, eventually it all makes sense.
Based in the Dominican convent in Old Town Nice where he maintains his own atelier, he has produced thousands of paintings, mostly inks and gouaches on paper. Abstract, vivid, intentionally imperfect. His artistic philosophy centres on the idea that meaning emerges from the crack, not the polish. “Painting is a way of writing,” he says, “an artist’s way of expressing himself when he cannot do it in words.”
Video via artworks! – l’art à l’œuvre… on YouTube
But words have always been his other medium. His publication list reads like three separate careers: translations of biblical texts (Genesis, Song of Songs, the Gospel of Mark), philosophical treatises on Aristotle and Augustine, and collaborations with contemporary artists. So when someone with this range turns to crime fiction, expect something outside genre conventions.
From Revelation to Ritual Murder
Du sang à Moulinet (Blood at Moulinet) is a French noir thriller which follows a brilliant private detective hired by the Bishop of Nice to investigate a disturbing crime at the Chapel of Notre-Dame de la Menour in Moulinet.
The book opens by quickly leading to a story within the story, which will eventually interweave. That second story is told by its anonymous narrator and begins with an ominous warning: “Before I begin my testimony and dive into the story of events, I must warn you. What you are about to read is true. Not “inspired by real events”, no. True. Entirely. Verifiable — at least on the surface.”
What had happened?
A massive quantity of human blood has been discovered inside the church, along with cryptic inscriptions on the walls, but no body has been found.
An anonymous letter arrives at the Bishop’s office, signed with Greek letters: ΧΙϚ. They total 616, an ancient textual variant of 666, the mark of the Beast from Revelation. The letter describes ritual sacrifice and promises more to come: “I have returned. For the saints are dead. The angels have fallen silent. Only we remain, the watchers of the end.”
Enter Jugger Naut (nicknamed “Bridou”), an unconventional detective and former seminarian who uses both cutting-edge criminology and what he calls “archaic” intuitive methods. Called in by his old seminary friend, Bishop Hervé de Clercourt, Jugger begins to uncover a conspiracy that stretches back centuries to a secret society called the “Maestri Perfetti” (Perfect Masters), a Piedmontese group that has devolved into apocalyptic satanism.
The investigation reveals that the blood belongs to Chiara Ferrero, a missing hiker who appears to have been sacrificed in a ritual meant to inaugurate a new age – an actual apocalypse, not a metaphorical one. As more bodies pile up, the traces lead into Nice’s hidden underbelly: Further inquiries will eventually involve everyone from the Bishop to Marseille underworld figures. It touches Masonic lodges, libertine establishments, organized crime connected to the Calabrian ‘Ndrangheta, and networks of power structures extending from religious institutions to civil administration. And it sheds light on the networks of corruption stretching from the Church to the Préfecture, that Nice is so careful to hide behind the trompe-l’oeil of its beautiful façade.
Nice as A Stage Set
This ritual sacrifice, fortunately only of fictitious origin, is set in a real chapel, just miles from Nice. Notre-Dame de la Menour wasn’t randomly chosen. It sits above the Bévéra river, where Revolutionary troops massacred counter-revolutionary Barbets during the 1790s. Historical violence echoing into the present. And clearly, there is a trace to the capital city of the Riviera, lauded for its beauty.
But Yves-Marie Lequin’s Nice is not the picture-perfect Instagram city that tourists photograph. Early in the novel, the anonymous narrator, through the framing device of a manuscript mysteriously delivered to an investigating judge, delivers this assessment:
Nice, a city of illusions, transformed into an amusement park, with its façade of flower pots, its real estate riddled with the Calabrian mafia, the ‘Ndrangheta (a word that means virility and courage!). A cursed, tacky city that has nothing but contempt for its inhabitants — the very people from whom it has stolen even their carnival. Behind the scenes of its shows, there is only shame and misery. It has the poorest neighbourhood in France. It lives on a tourist drip. The void is gaining ground every day. A headlong rush. The fall is near. It will be brutal.
Nice is not a city, it is a backdrop. What is hidden there is greater than what is shown. And in its administrative depths, beneath its Italian-style repainted façades, lies another geography: that of arrangements, paid silences, and dubious alliances between organised crime, senior civil servants and religious interests.
This harsh criticism, although delivered by a character in the novel, is what its author perceives. And it isn’t the rant of an outsider. Yves-Marie Lequin has lived in Nice for over 20 years, long enough to love it and see beneath the surface. He loves the open-mindedness, the strong yet relaxed relationship between the church and the Niçois, the ease of forging connections, the laid-back Mediterranean lifestyle. Most of all, he loves the artistic community. “There are so many talented artists here,” he has said, “and you find more creativity than anywhere else outside Paris.”
But love doesn’t preclude clear sight. His Nice exists in tension – Plato’s definition of love incarnate: the child of need and abundance. Beauty and corruption coexist. The sacred and profane wage their eternal war on streets that look like holiday brochures.
The choice to set a crime novel here also taps into Nice’s thriving polar culture. Many local authors, among them Brigitte Rico, Bernard Deloupy, or Jean Emelina, have built careers anchoring their detective fiction in Niçois settings. Frère Yves-Marie joins this tradition but brings his philosopher’s eye and theologian’s understanding of symbol to the genre. For him, Nice is more than a location, it is a character in its own right.
The Genesis of the Apocalypse
But the question still lingers: what possessed a mild-mannered Dominican friar to write a blood-soaked thriller featuring satanic cults and libertine establishments?
It all began when Yves-Marie spent months translating the Book of Revelation for a richly illustrated edition published in 2024. L’Apocalypse: Le soulèvement de l’espérance (The Apocalypse: The Uprising of Hope) presented John of Patmos’s visions as a cry of resistance against oppressive power, focusing on the true meaning of the word apocalypse, “revelation”.
Yves-Marie Lequin describes the biblical Apocalypse as “full of noise and fury” with “almost hallucinatory visions” that have continuously inspired “mystics, artists, writers, poets” because in reality it hides a treasure: a message of hope and resistance.
But what happens when you spend months translating John of Patmos’s fever dreams of beasts and blood, of fallen angels and final judgments? What visions emerge? What truths demand telling?
Du sang à Moulinet may be the author’s answer to a disturbing question: What would apocalypse look like if it arrived not as cosmic event but as slow poison seeping through institutions we trust? What if the Beast doesn’t announce itself with trumpets but with anonymous letters and ritual murders in forgotten mountain chapels?
The novel’s narrator states explicitly: “There are truths that rot when kept too long. They blacken from within. And end up speaking to you at night.”
This could be Lequin’s confession that his engagement with Revelation’s dark visions gave form to truths he had observed in Nice’s shadows, truths that demanded telling even wrapped in fiction’s protective gauze.
What sets Du sang à Moulinet apart is how Lequin’s philosophical training shapes his protagonist Jugger’s approach. As the detective explains his methodology: “Modern criminology has taught us to look for the signature. I look for the fracture. I search for the place where staging and the killer’s unconscious collide. The fracture point. That’s where truth is found. What I call: the moment of forgetting.”
This is pure Lequin, the philosopher who has spent years analyzing how art reveals truth through representation. Jugger doesn’t just analyze evidence. He reads crime scenes like texts, looking for the moment when the author’s unconscious breaks through conscious design.
The detective also employs what he calls “the memory of place,” the idea that every crime scene “registers everything. You just have to learn to read the silences, the tensions, the ruptures.” This almost mystical approach echoes Lequin’s artistic philosophy that meaning emerges not from perfection but from intentional imperfection, the crack where light enters.
The novel refuses tidy moral categories. Characters occupy grey zones. The Bishop is worldly and somewhat vain but genuinely courageous. The avocat Jean-Baptiste Sola comes from a family of modest Italian immigrant workers, has built a successful practice, yet feels his life pivot when he glimpses something larger and darker than he imagined. Even the victims carry ambiguity. Nothing is simple. Everyone contains multitudes.
The Dominican Tradition
Lequin stands in a long Dominican tradition of thinkers who refuse comfortable answers. Dominicans have always valued intellectual rigour and artistic expression. Fra Angelico, patron saint of artists, was Dominican. The order supported creation of both the Chapelle Matisse in Vence and Le Corbusier’s Convent of Sainte-Marie de la Tourette.
Dominicans have historically been willing to confront uncomfortable truths. Thomas Aquinas revolutionized theology by incorporating Aristotelian philosophy. Bartolomé de las Casas fought against abuse of indigenous peoples in the Americas. Yves Congar was censored by Rome for his progressive ecclesiology before being vindicated at Vatican II and made cardinal.
In this tradition, Lequin uses genre fiction to explore questions theological treatises might obscure: How does evil operate in modern institutions? What happens when sacred spaces are violated? How do we distinguish genuine spirituality from organized manipulation? Why do some truths only emerge through violence?
What’s Next?
The publisher notes readers are already asking for a second volume. The novel ends with the detective realizing “perhaps it was already too late,” hardly reassuring closure. Yves-Marie Lequin is considering a sequel, though he hasn’t revealed what further darkness he plans to unearth.
If the first book draws on Revelation’s imagery of the Beast and the Mark, will the second delve into the Seven Seals? The Whore of Babylon? Or will he mine other biblical texts? His publication list includes work on Genesis, Song of Songs, meditations on Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. Each could yield material for crime fiction in the right hands.
A Hybrid Achievement
Du sang à Moulinet succeeds because it refuses to be merely one thing. It is a detective fiction that reads like philosophy. A crime thriller infused with theological insight. A love letter to Nice that exposes the city’s dark side. Apocalyptic horror grounded in bureaucratic realism.
Most importantly, it is the work of someone who has spent decades looking at the world through multiple lenses – artistic, philosophical, theological, pastoral – and has developed the ability to synthesize these perspectives into something new.
Lequin once said his painting is “an artist’s way of expressing himself when he cannot do it in words.” With Du sang à Moulinet, he has found a way to express in words what perhaps even his paintings could not capture: the vision of apocalypse not as distant prophecy but as present reality, not as divine judgment but as human choice, not as ending but as terrible beginning.
For readers seeking entertainment, the novel delivers. It is a propulsive mystery with memorable characters, genuine surprises, and enough conspiracy to fuel late-night discussions, not unlike Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code. For those willing to engage with its deeper currents of philosophical investigations, theological provocations, and artistic sensibility, it offers something rarer: crime fiction with a soul and possibly a conscience.
In a complex era when apocalyptic thinking feels less like paranoia and more like pattern recognition, Yves-Marie has given us a story that honours both the darkness we fear and the hope we need. Whether that hope survives into the promised second volume remains to be seen.
What is certain: this Dominican friar has proven himself not just a painter of abstract visions but a cartographer of shadows, mapping territory where the sacred and profane wage their eternal, bloody war.
Du sang à Moulinet by Yves-Marie Lequin is published by Baie des Anges éditions (2025). His translation of Revelation, L’Apocalypse: Le soulèvement de l’espérance, is available from the same publisher.
Lead image Sanctuaire Notre-Dame de la Ménour, Moulinet, Alpes-Maritimes, France by Broenberr – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, link (edited, cropped); all other photos and images as credited
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