Starts off strong with a judge looking back at his last case as an investigator before he became a judge. It's about a man who disappeared from a girlfriends house. The story gets very muddled though as it becomes more about the investigators private life and his breakup with a girlfriend. The book is filled with misogyny. I had a hard time finishing it as the book went along. You can give this one a pass as the ending was stupid.

This was an interesting story but I keep getting caught unawares by the graphic details in the novels or the unlikeable characters.
The twist(s) were both expected and unexpected. The entire book has an ominous atmosphere and that lent quality to the story.
I would recommend it to readers who like inverted mysteries with highly unlikeable protagonists.

I really enjoyed this comic/graphic novel - It was unique, and something completely different to what I've read before.

Thank you NetGalley for providing an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

Read in English.

Just when a judge is about to see his last murder case, he jumps back to the beginning of his prosecutor career, and a case of a missing man the police can't be bothered with – a case that causes the loss of his key relationship that the elderly him is still grieving over.

This is very easily called out as too long and wordy – it's trying to be a police procedural, as the lover of the missing man gets fingered for being a bit weird and for making sure he's never found again, just as it's also trying to be a character piece for the judge bloke we're never really allowed to care much about. Thus we get him having a one night stand with a cute redhead (who crops up later having lost about six stone, so average is the artwork), and thus we get a decidedly creepy relationship with a thirteen year old girl who's one of his neighbours. But on the whole it's OK – and that whole does depend on you sticking it out to the big reveal. It's one of those books where you have to tell yourself to trust the publishers and author, that they are in the position of getting a book in your hands because they know what they're doing. Here it's hard to believe at times, but the patience of going through this is just about justified at the end.

Oh, and it's even harder to believe the publishers do know what they're doing, when the book's own back cover blurb and goodreads summary gives the whole story away.

I loved the cover. It made me request the title. I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, art and intrigue are solid. On the other hand, we've seen it before. I just can't see anything fresh or not-generic here. Worth trying, but nothing extraordinary.

The story starts out a little cliche and quite awkward. We soon jump into action with a confusing storyline. I struggled to figure out what was going on from scene to scene if we were in present-day or the past.
Sylvester is young and on his way to becoming a judge, his life is all about work which leaves him to neglect the relationship he has with his girlfriend.
At work, he is trying to get a woman who the police and he believed has killed her lover, although there is very little proof of forensics to back up the claim (it is the 80’s), only the account of witnesses (although none of them have witnessed the murder). They go after this old woman who is quite the character and convict her, Sylvester is haunted by her in his dreams and becomes quite messed up as a result.
All the while his girlfriend is cheating on him, dumps him, moves on and is proceeded to be slightly stalked by him. He’s mad at her for cheating while he also cheats with one of his friend’s wives??
Sylvester also has an odd friendship with a 13-year-old girl in the apartment complex, she cleans and cooks for him, they hang out together, and he believes her to be more mature than other girls her age.
In the end, this case really gets to him and he ends up committing a crime and getting away with it.

I would’ve enjoyed this more if the story wasn’t all over the place, making me incredibly confused. Sylvester is also a very unlikeable character, I got some serious incel vibes from him which were proved to be true.

Fair to say I didn’t enjoy this as much as I had hoped.
3 stars.

**ARC provided by Europe Comics via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

On the eve of his retirement a judge looks back at a difficult time in the early days of his career.

There is very much a dark European noir sensibility at work in A Lapse in Judgment. Unfortunately it doesn't work as well as it could. Rather than building a suspenseful tale that draws in the reader it ends up getting sidetracked in a brooding overlong self-indulgent diatribe. The judge, in both young and old incarnations, never really comes to life.

At times I had a feeling that something (possibly something important) was getting lost in translation. There were parts that seemed clipped... Like there was a missing panel of exposition or plotpoint. Maybe I just didn't "get it".

The art was fine. No complaints or issues in that respect.

There is some nudity, adult language and adult (sexual) situations. Not an overabundance of any of it but it's there.

***Thanks to NetGalley and Europe Comics for providing me with a free digital copy of this title in exchange for an honest review.

A thriller with a typical white male middle-aged anti-hero, in the style of such prestige dramas as Mad Men and Breaking Bad.

Sylvestre, a French judge, is on the cusp of retirement, just one more case to judge. It's at this moment he looks back at the time when he was still a prosecutor, right before he was to be made a judge. We see how the case he was working on became an obsession, while at the same time his (younger) girlfriend left him. It is only towards the end of the book that we discover how these two occurrences are linked.

The question whether you'll enjoy this book will rest a lot on how much you can stomach this kind of anti-hero. The story is soaked with subtle and decidedly unsubtle forms of misogyny, which might be a hurdle, but as the story is told from his perspective, it does fit his character.

The art is functional, with some lovely touches regarding the lighting of scenes.

I cannot fairly review this one. The font is difficult to read and the story did not hold my interest even with the short length. I enjoy graphic novels but this one was not for me. Thank you to #netgalley and the publisher for the opportunity to review this ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

I was really interested in reading this graphic novel. And I am happy I got the chance to.
But somehow there wasn't much I like about it. The dialogues and the lines were rather too difficult to read. The characters were confusing and the plot didn't do much. I so wanted to like this one. Sadly, I had to stop reading it midway.
Thank you #NetGalley for the book #ALapseinJudgement.

French crime noir story in graphic novel form. Unsatisfied with the ending as a whole, but again, crime noir. It was an interesting story, even though I hated the characters as people.

"A Lapse in Judgment" is an interesting graphic novel. It's not quite my type of reading or genre, but I'll recommend it to patrons.