Philippe Jaenada explores 1949 cold case in new novel

Author Philippe Jaenada has released a new novel, ‘L’inconnue du quai de Javel’, which investigates the 1949 murder of Louise Cansot in post-war Paris. Cansot, a young woman from Brittany who became a well-known artistic model in Montparnasse, was found strangled on the quai de Javel on the night of September 6-7, 1949.

Despite a six-month police investigation, the case was closed without identifying a killer. Jaenada utilizes police archives to reconstruct Cansot’s life—marked by artistic success, romance, and struggles with alcoholism—to attempt to solve the decades-old cold case. The narrative draws stylistic comparisons to the investigative methods of Georges Simenon’s Inspector Maigret.