In The First Person, a disillusioned computer programmer working for the police has decided to erase his identity. We do not know why. Leaving his old life behind, the man becomes a private detective in Los Angeles under a new, forged identity. He is hired to find a local gangster’s unfaithful wife, but after locating the woman, he falls in love with her. The pair plans to reunite after he returns her and collects his fee, but their plans are short-circuited by her husband, who punishes her cruelly for her betrayals. Devastated, the detective exacts his revenge. But soon, trapped by his own manipulations, he slowly falls into a mystic quest that redefines his self-image and world view.

Written in the first person, the book explores, through the main character’s eyes, his tortured mind, and depicts, with carefully chosen words, the emptiness of his existence and his lack of real emotion.

The First Person has been critically praised as “an account of one man's systematic destruction of his own personality” and as a bleak depiction of Los Angeles, done “with skill and style.”

“The First Person draws a terrific image of what the world of tomorrow could be, if there is a tomorrow. Both a crime novel and a reflection on the emptiness of existence, this novel is also somehow a sad poem. Written with a minimum of words and with short sentences, the reader feels the growing silence that slowly engulfs the character’s existence.”

- Réginald Martel, La Presse