"From the Other World" by Bernard Werber, summary

French writer Bernard Werber’s mystical detective story offers an unusual take on the classic detective genre: a crime victim searches for their killer in person while in the afterlife. Written in 2017, the novel was inspired by the author’s personal experiences with the death of his grandfather, who was suffering in the hospital, as well as encounters with mediums who introduced Werber to the world of spiritual practices.

Waking up without breathing

Writer Gabriel Wells’s morning begins with an idea for a new book. The phrase "Who killed me?" seems like the perfect opening, so he rushes to the Le Coclet bistro to work on his laptop. Along the way, his sense of smell disappears. Neither the flowers in the shop nor the car exhaust fumes are odorless. In a panic, the writer runs to see Dr. Frederick Langman.

A dark-haired woman in a floral skirt, resembling Hollywood actress Hedy Lamarr, sits in the waiting room. Gabrielle speaks to her, but the doctor calls his neighbor first and then slams the door in the old patient’s face. The woman leaves the office and bluntly tells the novelist that he is dead.

The man laughs. Lucy Filipini invites him to look in the mirror, where only she is visible. The lighter doesn’t burn his palm, and his leap from the sixth-story window turns into a hover. Lucy explains: she’s a medium who began hearing otherworldly voices thanks to his novel, "We the Dead."

The echo in his voice gives a glimmer of hope. The girl runs to his house at number 21, where, with the help of his maid, Maria Concepción, they find the writer’s sprawled body. His pulse is barely active, and purple spots are visible on his skin. The orderlies take the poor man to the Pompidou Clinic.

Departure to the Lower Astral

Resuscitation is of no help. The defibrillator’s electric shocks leave his flesh motionless, and the writer’s spirit leaves his physical shell forever. At forty-one, his life is cut short. Gabriel reproaches himself for laziness, loneliness, and fear of his family. He sees poisonous stains on his back and demands an autopsy, but the orderlies pack the body in a body bag.

In the hallway, Lucy encounters the deceased man’s brother, physicist Tom Wells. The brothers were twins, but mentally opposite. Tom believes the death was a natural heart attack due to cholesterol deposits in the arteries and prepares to cremate the body. The girl’s pleas and words about spiritualism fail to move the skeptic.

A disgruntled Lucy retreats to her cozy mansion, where thirteen cats await her. The animals immediately notice the guest hanging from the ceiling. The medium sits down on a meditation cushion, channeling souls for ascension to the Middle and Upper Astral Planes. After a simple vegan lunch, she receives her first client: Englishman William Clarke, who has purchased the Château de Mérignac.

A tenant complains about the ghost of the previous owner. The spirit of Baron Mérignac refuses to hand over the family estate to a stranger. The argument reaches a deadlock, and the Englishman throws money on the floor and leaves with threats.

Lucy tells the writer her biography. In her youth, she suffered from terrible migraines, fled to Paris, and fell in love with financier Sami Daoudi. He hid a suitcase belonging to a shady boss, which turned out to contain cocaine. She served eight years in a Rennes prison without betraying her lover.

There, she saved herself by reading Gabriel’s book "We, the Dead," invented a connection to the other world to protect herself from Dolores’s prison gang, and then acquired a true gift. After her release, Lucy worked for the blind Senegalese sorcerer Mamadou M’Ba, inherited a house from a wealthy client, but still couldn’t find Sami. Gabriel made a deal with her: she would find the killer, and he would find her missing lover.

At night, the medium sneaks into the hospital morgue. Under Gabriel’s dictation, she plunges a needle directly into the corpse’s heart and fills the syringe with thick, brown blood. The orderlies raise a cry of necrophilia, and a pursuit lands the girl in the psychiatric ward. The violent patients sense the wandering spirits flocking and shout about a witch. The writer lures the ghosts away with the promise of a favorable reincarnation, and Lucy escapes to the car.

While the girl sleeps, Gabriel soars above the Parisian night. In the movie star’s house, he meets his grandfather, former policeman Ignace Wells. He tells of his difficult life, his unloved wife Magdalena, and his long illness in the hospital, which ended with a fall from a window. The old man promises his grandson detective support and advises him to value his alliance with the psychic.

In the morning, Lucy takes the test tube to biologist Vladimir Krauz. A mass spectrometer analysis reveals a toxic mixture: antimycin A, atractylate, and oligomycin, combined with a sleeping pill. The poison took effect after 24 hours, meaning the poison was added on Monday, during the writer’s forty-second birthday celebration at the Le Coclet bistro.

At the same time, Ignace finds a drinking railway worker at the Gare de Lyon, taps into his damaged aura, and through the service database discovers that Sami bought a ticket to Geneva nine years ago.

Père Lachaise and the circle of suspects

A freezing rain falls at Père Lachaise Cemetery. Relatives, colleagues, publisher Alexandre de Villambreuse, and his former lover, actress Sabrina Duncan, gather at the fresh grave. The words "I am alive, you are dead" are carved on the tombstone. Thomas delivers a heartfelt speech, but then informs the publisher that he has destroyed the file for his brother’s final novel, "The Millennial Man," and burned both printouts.

After remembering the deceased, Ignas advises his grandson to look for a woman, since poison is a weapon of the weaker sex.

Lucy begins interrogating him. At the film studio, she finds Sabrina Duncan disguised as the historical poisoner. The actress denies guilt, opens up about her past, and points the finger at Tom, who was jealous of his brother and harassed her.

Meanwhile, Gabrielle and her grandfather fly to Geneva. At the Edelweiss plastic surgery clinic, the spirit of the young man burned in the accident reveals Sami’s new name: Serge Darlan. In exchange, the ghost asks her to convey to her mother a request to close the vengeance committee for his death and move on with her life.

In Paris, Lucy faces arrest: William Clarke hanged himself in the Château de Mérignac, and the police blame a spiritist for the tragedy. The summoned ghost of the baron confesses to having driven the captor to the noose with his nocturnal suggestions. Lucy is saved only by a direct call to her client, Interior Minister Valadier.

The medium then goes to the publishing house. Villambreuse announces the digital author’s project to the press and displays a 3D talking head. The publisher swears he is innocent of the death of his protégé and accuses critic Jean Moisy, who directly threatened the writer with violence on the television program "Tar and Feathers."

While spying on Serge Darlan, Gabriel finds himself at a charlatan seance led by Faustina Smith-Wellington. The woman secretly presses a pedal, causing the table to move. The man and his sisters naively believe the deception. The writer sees that Sami is not a criminal, but a frightened man.

Lucy sneaks into Jean Moisy’s bohemian party. The critic snorts cocaine and declares that the talentless writer probably committed suicide out of shame for his graphomania.

That evening, Gabriel gives Lucie the address. The happy woman rushes to Serge. After a passionate reunion and a night of passion, Ignace’s spirit breaks away from his surveillance and asks for reincarnation: he is promised a life with a merchant family on Place Pigalle. Lucie decides to give up spiritualism for marriage and sends Gabriel away.

The writer is left alone. In a restaurant, he attempts to interrogate Moisy through a breach in his aura, but is attacked by the spirit of academician Alain Rotte-Vrijet and the phantom of a terrifying Scarecrow. Childish fear paralyzes the victim. Arthur Conan Doyle himself comes to the rescue with the ghost of the Hound of the Baskervilles. The English classic drives the snob away and advises him to take a closer look at his twin brother.

In a secret military tower, Gabriel finds Tom at a strange wave apparatus. Thomas Edison hovers nearby. They are testing a necrophone — a device for direct radio communication with the world of the dead. The connection is successful for a few seconds, after which the device burns out.

Physical transformation

Dolores’s ghost flies into the lab: Lucy has been kidnapped. Gabriel flies to the villa under construction. It turns out that Sami has returned to crime and betrayed his former love to a gang of pimps. The gangsters inject the girl with a massive dose of heroin, destroying her aura’s defenses.

The vulture spirits have gathered, preparing to take over the alien flesh. Lucy begs Gabriel to enter through the seventh chakra at the crown of her head while she temporarily leaves her body. The writer takes the place of the hostess.

He’s going through a terrible drug withdrawal. After waiting for the right moment, Gabriel, disguised as a woman, picks the lock with nails, neutralizes the guards with a cat, and steals a sports car. He races to Krause’s lab, where he undergoes a full detox and blood wash.

The experience of being in a woman’s body overwhelms the writer. Menstrual cramps, spasms, the need for skin care, and uncomfortable shoes give way to the delight of the taste of food, a hot bath, and fresh aromas. In Lucy’s body, he sits down at the computer and, in one breath, writes the first chapters of a novella about his own posthumous investigation.

Lucy, in spirit form, along with Dolores, punishes the traitor Sami by whispering nightmares to him through holes in his aura.

Meanwhile, Minister Valadier and Prime Minister Brocard arrive at the medium’s house. Dressed in a fine dress, Gabriel performs a brilliant table-turning séance, summoning the ghosts of François Mitterrand and J. Edgar Hoover for the officials.

The writer again interviews his loved ones. He dines with Toma, dodging his brother’s awkward advances, tests a virtual double at Villambreuse’s, and escapes Sabrina Duncan’s advances. A violent migraine strikes him down. Lucy returns to her house and refuses to delve into his tormented mind.

Then Gabriel leaves the shell, leaving the flesh under the watchful eye of the cats. Lucy tries to occupy the body, but pain drives her out. Now both detectives are floating as spirits again.

The Battle of Stonehenge and the Verdict

The spirits travel to England to Conan Doyle. Having learned the killer’s name, he leads the French to Stonehenge to the guide and druid Michael Plumer, also known as Gutwater. Lucy briefly possesses her body in Paris, transfers a large sum to the druid to buy boars and beer, and then the Samonios ritual begins.

Suddenly, an army of academic writers, led by Rott-Vrije, descends upon the wasteland. Snobs attack proponents of genre literature. Characters from classic novels clash with Cthulhu, robots, and hobbits.

The brawl is stopped by the gigantic spirit of the serpent Tuan, the first druid of Earth. The serpent reconciles the two sides, reminding them that the goal of any storyteller is to inspire a love of reading.

The dazzling Hedy Lamarr appears. The actress takes Gabriel into space, passes the Sun, and delivers him to Purgatory on the star’s axis. In a crystal cave, the true ruler of the Upper Astral Plane, Metraton, sits on a quartz throne, disguised as an old woman in a Peruvian beret with a white poodle on her lap.

Metraton admits: she personally eliminated the writer. The reason was an unpublished draft of "The Millennial Man." The author’s method of rejuvenation using the genes of a mole rat, a salamander, and a tortoise turned out to be scientifically accurate. The book’s publication would have led to the discovery of a real elixir of immortality, the overpopulation of the planet by up to twenty billion souls, and an ecological catastrophe.

Metraton convinced the sleepwalker Ghislaine to falsify her tests, claiming she had cancer. Dr. Langman believed the paperwork and, out of pity, slipped a poison cocktail into the birthday boy’s celebratory glass.

The old woman demands rebirth, but Gabriel refuses to erase his memory. He promises to rewrite "The Millennial Man" as a warning, removing the correct formulas and proving the futility of eternal life. Metraton agrees to the deal. She allows him to remain a wandering soul and write new books through a medium, but forbids Tom from selling the necrophone, lest he create chaos in the ether.

Lucy finds Tom in her apartment with a portable communication device. Protecting the secret of the other world, she approaches the physicist and convinces him to hide the plans.

The medium then goes to Villambreuz. She declares the computer program a failure and offers to publish novels dictated to her by Wells’s spirit from the looking glass. The publisher enthusiastically signs the contract.

Gabriel returns to Paris a free man. At Père Lachaise Cemetery, he no longer worries about the cause of his death, having realized the continuity of creative existence and beginning to dictate a new manuscript to Lucie.