Someone Had to Do It

Three men are dead, and Élise, unshaken in her certainty, knows: someone had to do it.



South Africa, 2019. Élise runs a farm in the wine-growing province of the Western Cape. As she prepares to dismiss the viticulturist for having slapped a domestic worker, the vineyard owner ? a wealthy Bordeaux châtelain whose fortune traces back to the slave trade ? forbids her from disciplining the violent man. The domestic worker was insolent, he argues, and the slap well deserved. A smoldering rage takes hold of Elise. That same day, the owner invites a friend to the vineyard for a merlot tasting. As the two men indulge, Élise recognizes the guest. Twenty years earlier, he assaulted a student on the very campus where she lived ? an attack that remained unpunished and never ceased to haunt the young woman. For Élise, it is a point of no return. She vanishes, goes underground and takes up arms. Driven by a blind vengeance she claims in the name of sisterhood, she embarks on a reckless hunt from the vineyards of Stellenbosch to the docks of the Garonne River. To the judge who, eight months later, sentences her for her crimes, she has one answer only: someone had to do it.