NEW STUFF: The Readers' Room - Antoine Laurain

Antoine Laurain said in a recent interview on the Words with Writers website that he believes “…we need fairy tales not only for children, but for grown-ups too” and that “Novels have to be better than real life.” His most recent novel The Readers’ Room (2020), published in France as Le service des manuscrits, exemplifies both these beliefs. Additionally, Laurain also explores the power fiction has over real life. Is it possible for fiction to affect reality? Can fiction create reality from a story simply existing in a book?

Laurain has had a surreal experience with this himself. He reports that his prize-winning novel The President’s Hat (2012) was an example of fiction echoing reality without the author’s knowledge. A photographer told him that he owned Mitterrand’s hat. He told a story of how he was assigned to shoot photos of Mitterrand at a meeting in Provence back in the 80s. While on a smoke break away from the audience the photographer saw the president’s limousine and the door was open. The black hat was on the seat and just like Laurain’s protagonist the photographer was compelled to take the hat. He kept it for all those years. Laurain decided they would photograph the hat for the cover of his book. Prior to the photography session he looked inside the hat and there were the initials F.M. just as in his book.

In The Readers’ Room fictional events begin to replicate in real life. Sugar Flowers, a literary novel published to much acclaim, has been shortlisted for a nationally renowned French literary prize and is causing problems for the publisher because the mysteriously reclusive writer cannot be located. While the publisher tries to track down the author and get him (or her…the writer has the androgynous name of Camille Désencres and has never been seen by anyone) the novel’s action begins to take shape in real life. The story is of vengeful unnamed killer who murders several men by shooting them execution style with an old WW2 era German luger. When men are found murdered in exactly the same method as described in the novel, even down to the Nazi initials SS etched into the bullets, Violaine LePage, the director of manuscript services and the person responsible for finding the writer Désencres, comes under investigation by homicide detective Sophie Tanche.

While the book models itself on the conventions of detective fiction it is a phantasmagorical genre blending novel more concerned with identity, love and family secrets. Violaine is suffering from a crushed leg and PTSD after a horrific plane crash. She seeks help from her psychotherapist amusingly named Dr. Pierre Stein who helps her piece together the lapses in her erratic memory and reminds her of several behaviors and incidents that shock Violaine. As she undergoes her treatment she is alternately appalled and mystified by Stein’s revelations. Simultaneously she is still trying to find the elusive Camille Désencres. Oddly enough Violaine is convinced Camille is a woman. But why so sure of that one fact and unable to remember so much about herself?

The less known about the rest of this intriguing plot the more enjoyment the reader will gain from the multiple storylines. In its brief 176 pages Laurain has densely packed meaning and incident into his story. Violaine toils away at the mystery of the missing author while pondering the mystery of herself. Sophie Tanche and her policeman colleague trade theories about crime solving in both “real life” and the world of books. Maigret is brought up several times. And books and authors are, of course, discussed repeatedly. We even get a sampling of paragraphs from Sugar Flowers in which Laurain gets to experiment with style, syntax and poetic metaphor in the guise of “Camille Désencres”. I’m sure it was a challenge for translators Jane Aitken, Emily Boyce, and Polly Mackintosh to capture the flavor of a different writer in those three or four sections.

Antoine Laurain
photo © 2013, Marissa Bell Toffoli

The characters are as wildly imagined as the premise of the main story as well as the plot of the novel within the novel. From Beatrice, the elderly volunteer reader who manages to find true gems in the slush pile of unsolicited manuscripts to Edouard, the interior designer who comes to solve the problem of bookshelves in the readers’ room and in the process falls in love with Violaine everyone in the book is a unique individual. All of them are utterly believable despite all their quirks and idiosyncrasies which indeed make them all the more attractive and likeable.

It is rare for me these days to find works of contemporary fiction that are genuinely imaginative as uniquely original, that celebrate imagination, that are written first and foremost to transcend reality rather than to merely reflect it. “Novels have to be better than real life,” Laurain has said. A philosophy I fully agree with. And this novel is truly better than the reality we all are facing in this era of the pandemic. Treat yourself to something unique and refreshing and uplifting for a change. You so very much deserve it. And Laurain will be very happy to have gained another lifelong fan.

HALLOWEEN SPECIAL: The Hands of Orlac - Maurice Renard

Horror enthusiasts, whether of the written word or the cinematic variety, may recognize the title I'm about to discuss.  Unless you've read the novel, however, you have no idea what Maurice Renard was getting at when he wrote The Hands of Orlac (1920).  Those who may have seen one of its many filmed adaptations have never seen the real vision of the novel which is more than the nightmare of two hand grafts gone terribly wrong.  Though populated with ghosts and occultists, several seances and necromancy and all sorts of supernatural trappings, The Hands of Orlac, in fact, is not a horror novel at all. Rather it is a brilliantly fashioned detective novel wherein a series of impossible crimes are made to appear to be the work of supernatural agencies and a spectral being.

Stephen Orlac is a concert pianist who is travelling back to Paris for a long awaited reunion with his devoted wife, Rosine.  En route to the City of Lights the train crashes and there are multiple casualties. Rosine rushes to the scene of the accident and finds her husband under the body of a man clad entirely in white.  The man in white later appears at various spots throughout the wreckage leading Rosine to dub him Spectropheles.  This ghastly figure will continue to haunt her throughout the novel appearing and disappearing at the most unexpected places.

Unlike the man in white, Stephen has survived but has also sustained terrible injuries and must be rushed to a hospital for immediate surgery. He is operated on by Professor Cerral, a celebrity surgeon specializing in neurology and transplants.  Stephen receives two hand transplants and his torturous recovery and attempt to regain his musical skills are the basis of the plot. Those who know the many movie versions know the secret of those hands and I'll not reveal it here. A fairly overused horror movie trope by now this gimmick of the hands seems to be an original idea of Renard's and he may be the first writer to use it in sensationalized genre fiction. The truth of Stephen's new hands is not revealed until the second half of the novel long after a variety of outrageous events occur ranging from ghostly manifestations, "externalized nightmares", an impossible jewel theft and the equally impossible return of the jewels to a safe in a locked rom, necromancy via a painted portrait as well as a seance complete with table tapping.

Original French edition 1920

The first half of the novel is told through Rosine's viewpoint. Though the novel is named for Stephen Orlac he is almost a minor character in this entire section. Everything we see is through Rosine's eyes and we read only of her perceptions. She is distraught that her husband is haunted by a grueling and painful recovery yet she is also terrorized by Spectropheles who she feels is responsible for a series of break-ins and crimes in their home. When the violence leads to murder the police are called in and the novel takes a sharp turn into the land of French detective novels.

It is here that the influences of French pulp writers Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre, creators of master criminal Fantomas, can clearly be seen. The first half of the novel subtitled "The Portents" has faint whiffs of the popular Fantomas serials so popular only five years prior to the publication of Renard's book.  With its constant reiteration and recap of previous action and incidents the story bears obvious structural similarities to a serial and most likely did appear as one in a French newspaper or magazine. Central plot motifs like the ghost of a murderer being responsible for two deaths and the bizarre idea of a rubber glove bearing fingerprints of another person are two ideas that appear prominently in the third Fantomas serial published in book format in English as The Messengers of Evil (1911).  Renard must have been familiar with that serial. He even includes a mythical gang supposedly behind all the criminal activity. His dangerous group, La Bande Infra-Rouge (The Infra Red Gang), is pure French pulp fiction. Apaches and murderous gypsies roamed the pages of French crime stories as much as Italian thugs and Irish gangs would appear in US pulp magazines. When Inspector Cointre, the egotistical policeman who seems entirely fashioned after Eugene Valmont, begins to fasten onto the idea of faked fingerprints all hope of the supernatural has pretty much been thrown out the window.  Cointre has some of the best dialogue in the novel, too. After ripping apart a sofa and finding puppets and props that were used by the fake medium he expounds: "When dealing with mediums, never get you furniture re-covered, or at least keep an eye on your upholsterer."  

At this point it is almost certain that the crimes, especially the murders, will appear to be the work of human hands and not spectral ones. Renard does what the French do so well in the earliest forms of detective fiction. He adds twist after twist. Stephen meets with the murderer who confesses his crimes. Then Renard dares to reveal that this being is in fact a walking dead man!  But Renard is not finished with his twists until the final paragraphs when Cointre reveals the final solution to all the mysteries with an unexpected announcement.

Second English translation, the better one!
(Souvenir Press/Nightowl Books, 1980)

The Hands of Orlac is one of the finest examples of French sensationalist fiction that one can find.  The English translation by Iain White (Nightowl Books/Souvenir Press, 1980) is the second and better version for (unlike the expurgated previous English translation of 1929) it retains the full lurid details, the relentless melodrama heightened with lightning strikes of exclamation marks on nearly every page, and the nearly hysterical voice of Rosine Renard describing in grisly and horrible detail the living nightmare she is experiencing in her home. Dream imagery floods the novel. Omens are inevitable, practically inescapable. Rosine's dreams are prophetic; much of what she sees while asleep later comes true. The words "portent" and "phantasm" occur with such frequency that one often expects for the ghosts to waft off the pages.

The most surprising element in the novel not seen in any adaptation I've watched is that Stephen's father, Edouard Orlac has become obsessed with spiritism. He and his friend Monsieur de Crochans have been dabbling in communicating with the dead.  Though they are suspected of collaborating with fraudulent mediums and police are investigating their activities. In the climax of the first section one of the necromancy sequences seems to be genuine with a shocking surprise for Stephen when he spells out the name of the spirit they have contacted. And yet for all Renard's fascination with the macabre, the abundance of weird and paranormal activity, he is compelled to rationalize everything that occurred in the first half when he relates the second half entitled "The Crimes."

In the last chapters Rosine and Stephen face the inevitable and horrible truth, something the reader has most likely guessed at even if he has never seen nor heard of the several movie Orlacs. But a French detective novel has never been French without the ultimate surprise saved for nearly the final paragraph. When that gasper comes in The Hand of Orlac it is both satisfying for the reader and a godsend for Stephen and Rosine.

FFB: Heart to Heart - Boileau & Narcejac

THE STORY: One evening a singer and her piano playing lover have an argument with the singer's composer husband ending in the piano player killing the composer. The two lovers cover up the murder by making it appear that the husband died in a car accident. But their trouble is only beginning. Only a few days later the wife receives a package from, she thinks, an unknown admirer. Inside is a record and when it is played she hears the final song her husband composed called "Heart to Heart." In an odd mix of devotion and hatred he asks her to record it while simultaneously accusing her of his murder. If she records the song he promises all will be well, but if she refuses he will send on a letter to the police. Then she learns that her friend, a music publisher & producer, also received a package -- the manuscript of the music along with a set of lyrics. He also wants her to record the song. Will she give in to what appears to be blackmail from beyond the grave?

THE CHARACTERS: Heart to Heart (1959) was originally published in French under the title À Coeur Perdu (To a Lost Heart), a more fitting title encapsulating the themes of obsessive love, jealousy, possession, and retribution. As usual for Boileau and Narcejac, the story is told from a male viewpoint.  Almost exclusively we see all the events through the eyes of Jean Leprat, the pianist lover who mortally wounds Maurice Faugères when he strikes him on the head with a heavy candlestick. I noted only one scene when the story shifts to Eve's viewpoint and Jean is not present. Otherwise, we are lost in Jean's obsessive world. It is almost strictly a two character piece with the story focusing on the aftermath of the crime and Eve and Jean's embroiled love-hate affair. They are typical of the tortured lovers that fascinate these French writers. Jean like Fernand Ravinal, the protagonist of She Who Was No More, is trapped by his emotions and lost in his thoughts. Interestingly, prison imagery is prevalent recalling their masterful thriller The Prisoner (Le Louves) published four years earlier. Jean muses over his desire to be free of the woman without whom he cannot live with lines like this: "To think that I love her so much -- as though I were some kind of animal and she were my mate!" Also like Ravinel Jean finds himself at the mercy of a controlling ghost of whom he remarks: "Eve belonged more to a dead man than to the living one."

Faugères' method of revenge is music. All three know that the song "Heart to Heart" will be an instant hit with its beautiful melody and lyrics describing intense longing. Jean describes the song this way: "It was a love song with a taste of tears, the rather embarrassing pathos of a farewell. But the refrain was virile stirring. It proclaimed the triumph of life." But Eve cannot sing such a song that is clearly her husband's plaintive call to her. The song is indeed recorded, but by Florence, a woman singer who was Eve's rival and who she feels is less talented, hardly an artist. Of course the song becomes a huge hit playing on the radio many times a day. And the two lovers cannot escape the song. Jean hears taxi cab drivers whistling the tune. Eve is annoyed when a elevator boy hums the song. It plays over the speakers in stores. Everywhere they go they hear the song. Jean comes to the horrible realization that Maurice Faugères "was stronger dead than alive."

INNOVATIONS: The police get involved when there are faint hints of foul play at the scene of Maurice's car accident. But it becomes a full blown investigation at the novel's midpoint with an unexpected murder of a supporting character that comes as a shock to the reader. Borel, the lead investigator, has as his primary clue only the sound of a woman's voice. A cab driver reports to the police that he dropped off a woman in the vicinity of the building where the crime took place. The most distinctive feature he can remember was her low and resonant voice, a voice like a radio singer. And so the book becomes not only about music and lyrics and the emotion carried in a powerfully written song but sound of all types. It's a brilliant addition of how sound and voices can become a surreal form of haunting that will eat away at the fragile consciences of our guilty duo.

Further building on the device of the several recordings that the dead Faugères has somehow managed to send to his wife and her lover the writers have Borel conduct an experiment in recording of his own. The policeman tracks down several woman singers and recording artists and asks them to speak the lines spoken to the cab driver and records them on tape. He plays all of the voices for Eve but she catches on quickly. She not only speaks the few sentences into the tape recorder she says, "Why did you not ask them to sing?" And then for the first and only time in the novel Eve sings the song "Heart to Heart." We never get to read the lyrics (a wise choice on the writers part) but we are told this:

She sang the first verse softly, her eyes fixed on Leprat. It was for him that she was singing. For him and for Florence, whom she was crushing with her talent. Florence ceased to exist. The challenge lent unbearable poignancy and sadness to Faugères' words. His song of farewell to Eve was transformed, in this police office, into her farewell to Leprat. Her face gradually became suffused with inexpressible grief, her voice took on inflexions that came from the blood, from the entrails; it was lacerated, agonized, and triumphant.

Sound -- whether it be the spoken voice, the singing voice or music itself -- is the real force of haunting in this story of obsession and possession. There may be the imagined ghost of Faugères reaching out to them but for these people for whom sound is such an important part of their lives, for whom music is an energy more powerful than their love for each other, it is sound that will be their undoing.

Danielle Darrieux (Eve) and Michel Auclair (Jean) in Meurtre en 45 tours (1960)

THE MOVIE: The novel was adapted for the screen as Meurtre en 45 tours in 1960. Freely adapted is more accurate. Extensively changed with most plot elements rearranged, the only features that remain unaltered are the characters' names, their relationships, and the recordings sent to Eve after her husband dies. In this rewritten movie version we never really know who killed Maurice until the rather ridiculous ending. Throughout the movie Eve and Jean suspect each other of causing the car wreck that kills Maurice. Gone is best part of the book -- the ingenious use of sound and music as methods to prey on their guilt. The screenwriters were clearly influenced by the success of Les Diaboliques (1955) and play up the possibility that Maurice may in fact be alive. The movie can be seen online in both French and English. Unfortunately, the English version is dubbed rather than subtitled.

EASY TO FIND? If you read French you are in luck. There are multiple used copies in various editions of À Coeur Perdu, all at cheap prices, from numerous US, UK and European dealers. Nearly all of these French books are paperback reprints. But the 1959 English edition (translation by Daphne Woodward) from Hamish Hamilton is a scarce and highly collectible book. There was only one hardback edition published in English and no paperback reprints that I know of. Currently there are only two copies available for sale: one is offered by an Australian dealer for US$108 and the other from the estimable Mysterious Bookshop in New York City for $125. Both are in fine condition and include the handsome DJ as shown from my copy up at the top of this post.

This is my second favorite suspense novel by Boileau & Narcejac. It stands out as an example of that all too rare work in genre fiction -- an artistic crime novel. They continue to explore their favorite themes of obsessive love and guilty consciences, incorporate the ghost and haunting angle, and the powerful metaphoric use of music and sound makes it all sheer brilliance. Though it all ends in genuine tragedy the book also has very slight touch of the detective novel in the second murder investigation that ought to please the purists. If you are fortunate enough to find a copy I highly recommend this. I'd go so far as to claim that this is superior to their other two well known books made famous by the movies Vertigo and Les Diaboliques, but not quite at the same level as their masterpiece The Prisoner.

The Dead Man at the Window - Jean Toussaint-Samat

For a book called The Dead Man at the Window (1934: Eng. transl. of Le Mort à la fenêtre, 1933) you would think that the primary focus would be the mysterious appearance of the title character. Well, I expected our brilliant yet altogether aloof detective Commissioner Levert to do so, at the very least call attention to it. But no. He holds back all mention of that figure from both shipping businessman Frédéric Moutte who acts as the novel's narrator and befuddled Watson and in doing so neglects to inform the reader. Levert expects Moutte, simply because he lives in the town, to know exactly why five men have dropped dead on the terrace where directly above a dead man appears at the window on the night of every full moon. Do you know of every local legend in your home town? I doubt it. Not one explanation for who the dead man in the window is, why he is there, and why he is there every full moon. Perhaps it's not a dead man at all but a ghost haunting the house. Levert knows, of course, and will eventually tell us but only in the final chapter. The bulk of the novel is spent investigating the reason why one man apparently died of fright on the terrace while five others committed suicide there over a period of over forty years. If the explanation of the not-at-all-mysterious dead man in the window had been given to both Moutte and the reader when Levert knew there would be no point in telling the story of all these strange suicides. Really this is not a novel at all. It's a short story transformed into a novel with all sorts of completely extraneous information that goes on and on and on.

The story begins as an engaging detective novel of the French school. The entire first section of this book divided into three distinct parts deals with a painstakingly detailed investigation of physical evidence like footprints and clothing to the point that one feels he has traveled back to the days of Emile Gaboriau in the late 19th century. The dead man at the window is dismissed almost as soon as he is mentioned. The owner of the house has one other interesting piece of information: he opened the shutters of that titular window because of the full moon. Does the policeman prod the witness further on this point with these obvious questions: "You open the shutters only during a full moon? And they remain closed at all other times? Why?" No. Certainly in any other detective novel these would be primary concerns. But the answer to these questions if the reader knew would immediately negate the reason for the book. There would be no mystery at all. Almost everything puzzling would be would be explained and a few other questions would be asked and voila! -- C'est fini la comédie.

Toussaint-Samat probably thought he was being clever by dropping these bizarre tidbits as if they are red herrings. No real devotee of mystery fiction would dismiss information related to the title of the book as a red herring. Does this writer think he is fooling his readers? Or perhaps he thinks this is creating an atmosphere of mystery by keeping the reader in suspense. But I would disagree with him. Overlooking or outright ignoring the obvious questions is not the way to create suspense. It is, however, an excellent way to provoke frustration on the reader's part.

How can Toussaint-Samat think that any reader would find this satisfactory? Introduce an intriguing premise in a single sentence, a constant reminder of that premise in the title of the book, and yet never address it? Instead the book goes into great detail about a seemingly insignificant murder of a thief that occurred in the nineteenth century; the arrest, trial and conviction of the two men responsible for the murder; and the life histories of the five suicide victims in absurdly detailed narratives that unfold and refold and overlap with each other. It's beguiling and maddening all at once. You can't help but marvel at the imagination required to dream up five life histories and find a way to tie them all together so cunningly. And yet... Where is the story of the dead man at the window? We want to know. Tell us about him!

illustration by Kay Rasmus Nielsen, Danish artist, for
a never published edition of 1001 Arabian Nights

This Chinese puzzle box narrative structure (which makes up the second section of this triple header of a book) is intended to make seemingly random events have a sinister design. The stories take on the shape of epic adventures in miniature. Unlike the more entertainingly told exercises of this type like The Arabian Nights or Harry Stephen Keeler's parodies of the Asian story-within-a-story motif Toussaint-Samat's novel becomes a tedious slog. The reader wades through nearly pointless stories in order to get to the core of the novel's real mystery. This is part of the novel's conceit -- that the stories will reveal patterns and the overlapping will reveal connections much like the way Ellery Queen would pore over odd clues in order to reveal a pattern of criminal behavior and make sense of the cryptic dying clue or, to take The Chinese Orange ystery as an example, the reason an entire room had everything turned upside down and backwards.

It is the third section where the book just completely falls to pieces. After treating us to genuine French detection in part one, then steeping us in melodramatic and hair-raising adventures in part two, Toussaint-Samat transforms the book into a riff on the lost race fantasy. Illogically, the detective duo find it necessary to travel to French Guiana to interview the only living convict sent to a penal colony after being found guilty of that 19th century crime discussed in part one. He has remained silent all these years and they hope to force the truth from him. He refuses to speak (of course!) and they are compelled to make an arduous months-long journey through the jungles to a pre-Columbian ruin where human sacrifices took place. I kid you not. And there's more. It's not just that this climax is utterly ridiculous and over-the-top that the book fails for me, but because it is filled with factual errors that simply ruin any sense of adventure or even fantasy.

The author confuses South American and Central American mythology, religious rites and cultures. There is a frequent mingling of mythologies in lost race literature, but there is always an attempt on the writer's part to tie them together to make it all plausible. Not so with Toussaint-Samat whose research is specious and just plain wrong.

One of the characters is a woman who is supposedly descended from an Incan princess and who has a tattoo on her chest to prove it. But when she brazenly bares her breasts to expose the tattoo it is of Huitzilopetchli, who she calls the Great Plumed Serpent and claims is a great god of the Incans. Wrong. He is the Aztec god of war often depicted carrying a serpent-shaped scepter (see image at right). The "Great Plumed Serpent" is Quetzalcoatl, also a figure from Aztec mythology. Absurd statements pop up: "All those Inca, Toltec and Kichaun [Quechua] temples are the same." An archeologist or ethnologist would go ballistic over such an erroneous generalization. Unforgivable, I think, for an adult writer living in the 20th century. Even the pulpiest of lost race fantasies so obsessed with undiscovered lands populated with descendants from Atlantis or Aztec and Incan kingdoms never combined all of those cultures in one mishmosh of a story. Nor would they make the fundamental error of misidentifying an Aztec god as an Incan god. And a truly imaginative writer would attempt to explain why a culture known to be confined to the western coast of the continent would show up in the northernmost portion of the land, 1800 miles from their central domain. This is the difference between the suspension of disbelief and just plain disbelief.

And what was accomplished in this journey? A gold case is retrieved from a hidden compartment underneath a sacrificial alter. The gold box was placed there by the other convict who after managing to escape his prison cell fled to the jungle and died in the ruin. In the gold box is... Oh why bother? It's all just utterly ridiculous. I no longer cared about anything in the final summing up, especially when it was revealed that the man who died on the terrace was not even who we thought he was! There was a switcheroo of identities (in yet another eleventh hour revelation) and the entire story descended into the kind of self-parody that Maurice LeBlanc loved to indulge in when writing the later Arsène Lupin novels.

But what about the dead man in the window? (I hear you all cry out in unison.) Dare I tell you that he's not human? Not even a ghost? Not human and not a ghost and still a man? Can't be, can it? I leave that to you wily detectives out there in the dark to figure out for yourself.

Or you could read the book, I guess. But I trust none of you could possibly be that curious or masochistic.

TUESDAY NIGHT BLOGGERS: "Murder à la Carte" by Jean Toussaint-Samat

Sheer serendipity today!

In researching the life and works of Jean Toussaint-Samat, a new to me author whose book The Dead Man at the Window I will soon be reviewing, I came across this nugget of Gallic Golden Age Fiction. As luck would have it's all about poison. Didn't think I'd have anything more to continue the conversation about toxicity in detective fiction, but here you go.

This scarce English translation was published in The Living Age which billed itself as "an eclectic literary magazine" that lasted from 1844 to 1941. Toussaint-Samat's story appeared in the June 1, 1931 issue. It was translated by an uncredited person from the French and originally appeared in Revue Bleue, a "Paris Literary and Political Semimonthly".

All four pages of this short short appear below. Enjoy!

FFB: She Who Was No More - Boileau & Narcejac

The crime novel plot motif of losing a corpse is often the basis for a black comedy romp. Craig Rice used this gimmick repeatedly in her novels featuring Jake & Helene Justus and John J. Malone, and it shows up in hundreds of movies notably Hitchcock's The Trouble with Harry. But in the hands of Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac a disappearing corpse is hardly a laughing matter. Celle Qui N'Etait Plus (1952) was the first collaboration between these two French writers who previously had both won French crime fiction awards for their solo efforts. The success of the duo's first book would lead to a long lasting friendship and over thirty more books as a writing team. In a nod to the novels of James Cain we get an avaricious, adulterous couple who drown the man's wife in a bathtub then manage to lose the body after dumping it in the lavoir (a French communal laundry near a river). It's a study in guilt, remorse and madness more than it is a detective novel. In fact, there is only one policeman who appears and he's a traffic cop who makes a brief cameo at the very start of the book. Boileau and Narcejac are more interested in the terror that resides within the mind of a guilt ridden murderer than they are the usual criminal investigation plot.

There is very little action in this book with most of the novel focusing on the thoughts and delirium of the main character. You may know the story from one of the several movie adaptations, but they are just that - adaptations. The film tells the story of two women drowning a husband while in the book a philandering couple murder the wife. The only things the book and the film have in common are a bathtub and the guilty imaginings of one of the killers. While the film takes a very different path to convey the terror of a guilt ridden mind with some indulging in horror movie motifs, the book is a bit more mundane in the way the same terror is depicted.

The main character in the novel is Fernand Ravinel, the husband. Fernand is an ineffectual travelling salesman who hawks sporting goods. His special talent is designing and creating fishing flies which take up an entire page in his company's fisherman's supply catalog. But Fernand is otherwise dull, unassuming and in frail health the result of a minor heart attack. He and his mistress Lucienne, a doctor, conspire to do in Fernand's wife Mireille and claim the insurance money. It is Lucienne who does the dirty work while Fernand unable to watch his wife being drowned in a bathtub leaves the room and listens to the murder being carried out. His only act as an accomplice drugging a beverage his wife drinks and fetching the andirons from the fireplace that will hold the body under water. It's a clinical murder carried out with the precision of a surgery. Later they transport the body to the Ravinel's home and unload her into the river that flows through the lavoir. When Fernand coaxes one of his bar mates to visit the lavoir under the pretense of assessing it for repairs he is shocked when his wife's body is no longer there. Thus begins his slow descent into a surreal world of strange events and morbid imagination.

There is an abundance of fog imagery throughout the novel. Boileau and Narcejac use this old Gothic novel trapping in a unique way. Since his childhood Fernand was obsessed with fog and used to play an odd game in which he disappeared into the fog, sort of an astral projection, where he sent his mind into the fog imagining that he has crossed over from the living to the dead. This idea of crossing over is further elaborated throughout the novel as Fernand tries to come to terms with whether or not Mireille is actually dead. She keeps turning up in their house leaving notes. There is even a report that she visited her brother though he was the only witness. The brother-in-law's wife resents that Mireille did stay long enough so she could see her too. This fact plants the seed in Fernand's mind that his wife may have been a ghost. Then he obsesses about a small detail -- Mireille kissing her brother's cheek. He wonders how the kiss felt, if it actually took place, or if Germain (the brother) was merely telling a story to make him jealous. Is she a ghost? Is she alive? If so, why does she not show herself to him? Did the murder take place or has he completely lost his mind?

There is a subtle suggestion that Mireille and Lucienne are the real adulterous lovers. Typical of the 1950s Lucienne is described as "mannish" and being stronger than Fernand. He cannot remember why he was attracted to her or what started their affair. A telling moment of his ignorance -- of his own life being enveloped in a thick fog of overlooking the obvious -- is when he finds photographs of a vacation the three took together. The pictures show Lucienne and Mireille smiling and joyful. Fernand is absent from them all. He cannot even remember taking the photographs himself. All he wonders is "Where am I? Why did no one take any photos of me?"

What little action there is comes in brief moments between Fernand and one other character. Very rarely are more than two people ever present in any scene. The novel is one of isolation. The real setting of the book is Fernand's mind. The story is almost exclusively made up of his thoughts, memories, reveries, and the "fog game". Boileau and Narcejac set the groundwork for their future crime novels centered on the aftermath of murder and how the criminal is in some ways more of a victim of his crime than the actual corpse. Like many of their best books this debut comes with one gut wrenching, shocking scene and a surprise twist in the final sentences.

She Who Was No More attempts to blend the conceits of a ghost story with a murder tale resulting in a claustrophobic, dreary world of doubt and mistrust. It is a loveless world with no real hope culminating in one of the most downbeat endings that rivals any American noir. French crime novels seem to be drenched in self-inflicted misery, more deeply affecting to the characters than the most violent crime.

After decades being out of print and nearly all scarce paperback editions in English translation having being bought up by covetous collectors She Who Was No More is once more available in a new paperback edition from Pushkin Vertigo. They have reprinted the original 1954 English translation by Geoffrey Sainsbury (published as The Woman Who Was No More) rather than having a new edition translated. He does a fine job though he lapses into a stilted British idiom a bit too often. Nevertheless, fans of Boileau and Narcejac and those familiar with Les Diaboliques (or The Fiends), as it is known in the movie version, ought to grab a copy soon. Reading the novel is a revelation and an education into the beginnings of a writing team who unlike many lived up to the promise of their first book and proved to surpass this experimental crime novel with a handful of similarly groundbreaking work.

The House that Kills - Noel Vindry

I am beginning to sympathize with Julian Symons’ complaints about what he called the humdrum school of detective fiction. At least the French version of the humdrums. I’m certainly encountering a slew of them as they are presented to us via Locked Room International, an indie press created by John Pugmire who also translates the books into English. The latest offering, Noel Vindry’s debut mystery novel first published in France in 1932, is one of the most disappointing offerings yet. Though two of my favorite French crime writers Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac admired Vindry calling him a writer of “unequalled virtuosity” and a creator of “stupefying puzzles” I found neither of those qualities on display in this first book.

The House That Kills is the perfect example of a detective novel as a wholly contrived story. And as such it is far from mystifying. Any devotee of the locked room or impossible crime novel will see through its trickery almost instantly. A family is terrorized by a gang of murderers who announce their crimes in the form of anonymous letters miraculously hand delivered to the house without anyone seeing the messenger. Each victim is killed violently in a locked and guarded room by an unseen assailant who manages to escape the house altogether. Paragraphs are devoted to the layout and architecture of the house with Vindry going into great detail on how its impenetrably designed locks would take a lengthy time to open even with a key and the thick walls could not possibly conceal secret passageways leaving the crimes even more puzzling as to how the killer got in and escaped unseen -- at least to the dull witted and easily manipulated policemen and the narrator, a junior magistrate. To any astute reader the solution is obvious.

This particular plot is extremely derivative of two very well known locked room mysteries, borrowing a time worn gimmick that dates to the Victorian era. M. Allou, a veteran magistrate who apparently knows his history of detective fiction very well, appears on the scene at the novel’s midpoint, within minutes sees through all the deception and in the ninth chapter delivers his solution to all but one of the four murders committed. But there are six more chapters to come. Why bother reading the rest you may wonder. Well, there is that one unattributed murder, the escape of the accused from police custody, and one more seemingly puzzling attempted murder.

Original French edition

This edition of The House of That Kills includes a foreword by Pugmire in which he refers to several of Vindry’s essays on the genre, specifically the subgenre Vindry calls the roman problème (problem novel literally, but Pugmire translates it as puzzle novel) to distinguish it from the roman policier (the police novel, or police procedural). There is an appendix that includes the full versions of those essays making the foreword somewhat redundant. It’s interesting to read Vindry’s own analysis of the detective novel as he envisions it and comparing his ideas to The House that Kills. Almost none of what he remarks on is present in his first book. He talks about how the roman problème can include drama, mystery and logic and still have room for style. Balance was his main concern; the skill with which the writer must handle all three elements not allowing any one to overtake the other. Remarkably, he writes "...if logic dominates the work degenerates into a game, a chess problem or a crossword and it's no longer a novel."  I fear that is exactly what happens with Vindry's debut book.

The House that Kills is stripped down to the barest essentials. While there is action aplenty the characters are puppets in service to the contrived story. All these impossible crimes, talk of ghosts and inhuman agencies are intended to create an atmosphere of mystery and wonder. The reader should be thrilled and curious but nothing seems at stake. It all moves too fast and the two emotional moods waver between cold logic and histrionic disbelief. Every now and then for variety there is an outburst of obviously feigned horror. With little room left for Vindry’s supposed style and no real interest in making any character remotely human or complex or interesting in the least this impossible crime mystery novel is impossibly cold and empty. As cold and empty as a locked and sealed room.

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Reading Challenge update: Golden Age card, space G2 - "Set anywhere except US or UK"

FFB: Foam of the Daze - Boris Vian



Tam Tam Books ed., English translation
Currently in its 3rd printing

The fantastical world of Boris Vian’s L’Ecume des Jours (1946) -- punnily translated as Foam of the Daze by Mark Harper -- is populated with kitchen mice that act as miniature housekeepers; deadly tools of assassination like the cop-killer and the heart-snatcher; and a mind boggling invention called a pianocktail, a combination robotic bartender and musical instrument that mixes, blends, and delivers potent potables by simply playing a tune on the keyboard. And Vian’s invention is not only limited to bizarre machines and anthropomorphic animals. The writer, also an accomplished musician, composer and friend of 1940s Parisian jazz and literary elite, was a lover of linguistic trickery and wordplay. Translating his many puns and jokes must’ve been a challenge to Harper who does an admirable job trying to capture the playfulness and humor that, as with most foreign language puns, are often untranslatable. For much of its brief but densely filled 220 pages the story is one of Vian’s most exuberant and joyous works.

Foam of the Daze is an unapologetic romance, a surreal fairy tale, and a literary satire all wrapped up in one delightful package. The story, however, is not all hearts and flowers though those two images feature heavily in the story. Vian scales the heights of delirious newfound love and plummets into the depths of despair when a mysterious illness threatens to end the ecstasy of a young couple’s honeymoon.

Wide eyed jazz lover Colin lives a carefree life enjoying cocktails and playing Duke Ellington records with his musician friend Chick who quickly meets and falls in love with the beautiful Alise. Colin is immediately jealous and longs for his own Alise. No sooner does he make his wish then he meets Chloe, as equally wide-eyed and optimistic as he is. It’s no coincidence that she bears the same name as a popular Duke Ellington song. There are no real coincidences at all in Vian’s world. Every action, every word of dialog has a purpose and is interconnected to every object and character in the story.

Boris Vian, circa 1940s

The most remarkable thing about this love story is the way illness is depicted. So often people talk about how their lives fall apart when a loved one is suffering a terminal illness. That is literally what happens to Colin’s world. His house begins to deteriorate, the ceiling crumbles, glass windows and tiles shatter, rooms shrink and doorways become almost inaccessible. All because Chloe has succumbed to an inexplicable malady, a miracle illness. Somehow a water lily has begun to grow around her lungs and heart. It’s not possible to operate and remove the plant without killing her. The only treatment method is to surround her with flowers and plants, tend and care for them so that in their beauty the water lily is shamed into withering and disappearing from Chloe’s body.

Filled with a soundtrack of Ellington’s music, multiple references to New Orleans and Memphis style jazz, and a subplot involving a satirical jibe at Vian’s good friend Jean-Paul Sartre who appears in the book as pop sensation Jean-Sol Partre, author of Vomit and other works of existentialist bestseller-dom, Foam of the Daze is like no other book I have ever read. Practically unclassifiable in the way it absorbs so many genres Vian's novel is bewitching and strange and hysterical and ultimately deeply moving. It’s an assault on the senses and the intellect. Imagine entering a floral shop crammed full of exotic plants and breathing in the mix of heady scents, taking in the wide array of colors and shapes, all while drinking an unnameable, rainbow hued cocktail with an indescribable yet utterly intoxicating flavor. This is what it’s like to read Vian’s novel.

Graphic novel adapted by Benoît Preteseille

His writing can be hilarious as in the sections making fun of collector mania. When Chick is not satisfied with owning Sartre’s books a wily bookseller coerces the musician into buying the writer’s fingerprints and old pants convincing him the items will increase in value as much as the writer’s books. Only a few pages later Vian tugs at our heartstrings in relating Colin’s desperate attempts to become gainfully employed often humiliating himself in the process so that he can earn enough money to keep buying plants and flowers that will help in his wife’s strange treatment plan. Not only do Colin and Chloe and their house suffer as the water lily infiltrates everyone and everything, but Chick and Alise undergo a rift in their relationship that leads to a surprisingly violent climax.

L’Ecume des Jours has been adapted into a movie by French director Michel Gondry and retitled aptly enough Mood Indigo, after the Ellington jazz standard, starring Audrey Tatou and Romain Duris as Chloe and Colin. The movie has already appeared throughout Europe at a variety of film festivals and will be shown at the Music Box Theater here in Chicago Sunday, May 11, 2014 as part of the Chicago Film Critics Film Festival. The movie has been picked up by Drafthouse Films and should appear in a limited release at art house cinemas sometime in the summer and eventually be released on DVD. A paperback tie-in edition is being released in the summer under the movie’s title. Anyone too impatient to wait for that edition can order Foam of the Daze directly from Tam Tam Books or any on-line retailer right now.

NEW STUFF: Syndrome E - Franck Thilliez

Syndrome E
by Franck Thilliez
translated from the French by Mark Polizzotti
Penguin Books
ISBN: 978-0-147-50971-0
370 pp. $16.00
April 29, 2014

There is a certain type of crime novel that wants to be everything. It wants to comment on the nature of evil and the predilection for violence, criticize government abuse with satiric jibes, entertain with quirky characters, and scare the pants off of you with scenes of grisly crimes that outdo anything in the latest torture porn flick. Syndrome E is one of those books. I should’ve hated it, but I found it to be one of the most guilty pleasures I’ve read in a long time.

Franck Thilliez has written a contemporary horror novel with elements of the detective novel that entertains as much as it repulses and disgusts. Any attempt to make the book a cautionary tale about the abuse of corrupt governments or a stab at educating people about such past disgraces like the Duplessis orphan tragedy and the experiments of the CIA on unsuspecting citizens is lost in his sea of information. Syndrome E is a potboiler thriller with all the usual ingredients in abundant display -- labyrinthine plot, globe trotting scenery, forgotten historical tidbits, arcane lore and legends, and a Pandora’s trunkful of bizarre murders and body mutilations. It does exactly what it should do –- jolt you with a few shocking surprises, terrify you with its indulgent and grotesquely executed murders, and in the intervening scenes calm and assuage you with a perfunctory romance between the two lead characters.

Film lovers more than anyone will find much to enjoy. Thilliez is clearly a movie fan. The cause of all the mass slaughter (there are a lot of bodies) and paranoia found in Syndrome E is a 16mm movie so disturbing it leads one man to suffer hysterical blindness and haunts the memory banks of everyone else who is foolish enough to watch the movie. From it’s jarring opening scene –- that any true cineaste will instantly recognize from Dali’s Un Chien Andalou -- to its ostensibly innocuous images of a little girl cuddling a kitten the movie leaves each viewer with feelings of unease and disquiet without really understanding why. That’s because the movie made in 1955 is an early and very perverse example of subliminal filmmaking. Examination of the film uncovers a second film buried beneath all the primary images the viewer takes in. And that second film rivals any horror movie ever made.

Investigating the many murders linked to the ownership and eventual theft of the 16mm movie are two policeman. Appearing as solo lead characters in Thilliez’ other books (still untranslated into English) they meet for the first time in Syndrome E. Lucie Henebelle is a single mother doing her best to raise her twin daughters. Lucie lives for her job as police officer often abandoning her family and leaving her admonishing mother Marie to take on the role of primary caretaker.

Franck Thilliez, bestselling crime writer throughout Europe.
Syndrome E is his first book translated into English

In direct contrast to Lucie, the go-getter law enforcer addicted to the thrill of the chase, is the intense and morose Franck Sharko, probably the most original character in the book. He's a throwback to the eccentric amateur sleuth of the Golden Age, too. What makes him so eccentric? Franck is suffering from schizophrenic hallucinations after suffering a mental breakdown following the death of his wife and daughter. Even though he regularly medicates himself with Zyprexa he is enslaved to a phantom girl named Eugenie with whom he has frequent arguments. Eugenie goads and taunts him, hampering his decision making while also blackmailing him into buying her jars of cocktail sauce and candied chestnuts. If he gives her the foods she craves, she'll leave him alone...for a while. Of course she’s not real so she can’t eat any of it leaving Sharko with a stockpile of jars in his home and at work that make for raised eyebrows and prying questions from his friends and co-workers.

Lucie and Shark (“No first name, no titles, please.”) become partners through a combination of chance and Lucie’s desire to work with the man. Shark is a world class criminal profiler and has been called upon to use his skills on a case that appears to be the work of a serial killer. Five bodies have been unearthed in rural France, most of them now nothing but skeletons, but all of them with the tops of their skulls sawed off with surgical precision.

As the mystery of the film’s creation and meaning plays out it eventually intersects with the story of the killer responsible for the five murders and many other deaths throughout the world. Is it the movie itself that has created this monster of serial killer? Or is the killer only trying to recover the film for some private purpose? The trail will take Lucie and Shark from France to Egypt to Canada and back to France again. As the bodies pile up the two police discover that the terrible subliminal messages are part of a much larger global conspiracy involving the CIA, the Foreign Legion and the disgraceful past of 1950s era Quebec.

The novel's structure of finding an expert, interviewing the expert, having the expert "info dump" loads of technological or historical data gets to be very predictable. Among the varied topics lectured on are the latest trends in neuroscience, the use of neuromarketing in advertising, the recruitment process of the Foreign Legion, the methods of hiding subliminal images on film, how to splice and edit 16mm celluloid, and the shameful nightmare undergone by the Duplessis orphans in Canada. But at nearly 400 pages you do get your money’s worth in arcane educational moments.

Nicolas Cage can't believe what he sees in 8mm

Like Seven and 8mm (a movie that shares many ideas with Thilliez' novel) the images of violence perpetrated on film and in life are relentless and gut wrenching. A sex scene between Shark and Lucie that basically cures Shark of his schizoid hallucination is absurdly unbelievable. And often the language and sentence structure is inappropriate or awkward. I have no idea if this is the fault of the translator or Thilliez’ original French or a combination of both. But given all these caveats I still found myself turning the pages with abandon. No matter how much I wanted to find fault with this book I will concede that Thilliez sure knows how to tell a good story. He does a fairly good job, too, of creating suspenseful scenes that make the reader want to know what happens next. Plain and simple: a thriller is meant to thrill. Syndrome E lives up to that promise and then some. It may not be for the faint of heart, but any reader daring enough to take on its horrors and thrills will get way more than they expect.

According to Deadline.com Syndrome E has been purchased for the movies. As of February 2013 the screenwriter adapting the novel is Mark Heyman who wrote the very disturbing, surrealistic nightmare movie Black Swan about a ballet dancer losing her mind which won an Oscar for actress Natalie Portman. It’s a daunting project and I wish the entire production team a lot of luck transferring an imagined horror film into a real film. Often the real horror that goes on in the reader’s imagination is completely lost in the adaptation process.

FFB: The Double Death of Frédéric Belot - Claude Aveline

True 1st US edition (Henry Holt, 1940)

Every now and then a writer not primarily known for his work in crime fiction will try his or her hand at the genre and devise a novel so sublime and so subtle that it outshines the most ingeniously constructed puzzles of the Grand Masters of the trade. Claude Aveline's first attempt at a detective novel, The Double Death of Frédéric Belot (1932), is such a book. Using a typically bizarre double murder, as might be found in any Golden Age whodunit, for the framework of his story Aveline presents a story of deeply human characters and realistic, not melodramatic, motives for the crimes committed. A story that initially comes across as a baffling puzzler of a motiveless murder eventually transforms into one with a truly tragic outcome and a bittersweet poignancy.

Frédéric Belot is a master detective, the genius of his police department, the one to whom all other officers look up and respect. He is even tapped for an important promotion but wants nothing to with a high profile police job that would take him away from real detective work and saddle him with administrative meetings and – the bane of existence – public appearances at important government functions. Scandal hits the police department when his godson, Simon Rivière an inspector in the same department, finds the body of Belot in his recently renovated home on Rue Crimée. He's been shot twice -- once in the chest, again in the head -- and is amazingly still alive. But in the adjoining room Simon and his police team find another shooting victim, this one stone cold dead. The man bears a startling resemblance to Belot from his clothes that are exact duplicates of Belot's to his striking features that make him appear to be his twin. Which man is the real Belot?

Reissue US edition
(Doubleday Crime Club, 1974)

The barely alive Belot is rushed to a hospital while the dead Belot is examined at the scene of the crime. The concierge and her husband are questioned. Simon learns that only two people visited the house recently yet no shots were heard. The police doctor discovers that the corpse is wearing make-up and when it is removed there is only a trace resemblance to Belot. Who then was this man and why was he playing the part of Belot's double?

The title, the reader soon discovers, is a pun. For not only has Belot been murdered twice (his double death) it is his twin, or double, who has been killed alongside him. The play with language and dual meanings is as integral to the story as is the theme of disguise and masquerade.

Aveline also plays with the narrative structure. We begin with an anonymous writer narrating the tale, Simon then takes over telling the story of the shootings and the criminal investigation. At key points in the story the narrative is taken over by M. Regnard, the police chief, with Simon providing a written account of that portion of the story. But within M. Regnard's account there is yet another narrator who takes over in the voice of Andre Féron. It is during this portion of the story it is revealed the true identity of Belot's double and the reason for the masquerade. Minor characters earlier introduced into the story suddenly step from the wings to assume leading roles. Slowly it dawns upon Simon just why Belot had constructed a most bizarre double life. Yet a chance encounter with a lovely woman will alter Belot's carefully controlled dual life. As in real life chance plays an equally important role in the ultimate unraveling of the seemingly puzzling shootings in the apartments on Rue Crimée.

The detective novel aspects of the book are well done and show the kind of bravura performances one expects from the French. Aveline explores the bureaucracy and tedious division of departmental police stations with a insightful look at early police techniques, especially in the Identification department headed by the officious character of Cavaglioni. Interspersed with the police procedure we get the kind of detective work normally seen in puzzle novels as in the scenes where Simon is determined to explain the mystery of how the murderer entered Belot's apartments without being seen. The inclusion of floor plans (four of them!) revealing intriguing architectural features allow the reader to join the detective in uncovering the secret of the house on Rue Crimée. As soon as Simon penetrates the secret of the building he is confronted with even more mysteries and puzzles. Layer upon layer, the book never lets up.

The real draw of the book, however, is the exploration of character and behavior. Aveline's portraits of M. Regnard and all the policemen, Madame Morin and her husband, but especially Féron and Belot show his gift for both complexity and nuance in character. The key to the story lies not so much in the secrets of an oddly renovated building but in the hidden lives of the fascinating characters.  Real people always make for more intriguing mysteries than locked rooms and invisible killers.

French/English edition for use in classrooms
(David McKay, circa 1950s or 1960s)

The final chapters of this book turn the entire story upside down. What appeared to be a cleverly developed murder mystery turns out to be an impassioned and impetuous act of violence. Only upon closing the book does it all truly sink in how subtly powerful Aveline's story is. Easily distracted by the illogical and the seemingly impossible the police in Double Death... overlook the most basic of human emotions. The human heart is the greatest mystery of all and often acts in a fashion that defies logic or sense.

Aveline would go on to write a handful of more detective novels, three of them -- believe it or not -- featuring Belot as the detective. I can only assume that they are cases from his early career. It is the only instance I can think of a crime writer creating a detective, killing him off in his debut, and then writing a series of prequels.

The Double Death of Frédéric Belot was reprinted several times throughout the 1970s when Aveline who had abandoned the genre for over three decades returned with a bestselling book The Passenger on the U (L'Abonné de la Ligne U) (1963) that was a big hit in France. Publishers then went digging for his earlier translated crime novels and reprinted all of them.  It is likely you will be able to find any of them, including Double Death... , for relatively affordable prices in the used book trade. I have also seen copies of the original French book offered for sale.

NOTE:  In researching photos and scans of other editions I learned that this book was a major inspiration for the crime novels of Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, my idols in all of French crime fiction.  I can easily see what they were drawn to when reading this book which is truly mesmerizing in its multiple layers.

FFB: The Secret of Sarek - Maurice LeBlanc



Frontispiece for the US 1st edition

The Secret of Sarek (US edition 1920) is one of LeBlanc’s strangest books in the Arsene Lupin series. Essentially, the complex plot revolves around Veronique, a young woman who travels to an isolated island off the coast of Brittany in search of her kidnapped son. She soon discovers that a terrible prophecy involving herself is about to come true. The island’s inhabitants believe that when the so called "Thirty Coffins" (some stones that line the island) have claimed their thirty victims and four women have been crucified from some oak trees then the God’s Stone will be revealed – a stone which gives life and death.

In an abandoned shack Veronique finds a dead man with his hand chopped off and a bizarre drawing of four women crucified – one of the women bearing her own face. She begins to think that some supernatural force is at work. Plenty of adventure and some legitimate thrills keep the pace moving until the woman’s former husband thought to be dead turns up alive. The villain then discovers an old Druid man who claims to be guardian of the God’s Stone. It is, in fact, Lupin in one of his many disguises. From here on the book takes on a strange mocking tone and the whole thing dissolves into what is obviously LeBlanc’s derision for Rohmeresque style thrillers.

Critics have often commented that LeBlanc’s Lupin books border on the burlesque. In the case of this book that assessment is more than apt.

The Secret of Sarek was originally published under the French title L'île aux trente cercueils (The Island of Thirty Coffins). For a long time it was one of the most difficult LeBlanc titles to find in the used book trade as there were only hardcovers of the Macaulay first edition, scattered reprints from A.L. Burt, and no paperback copies. Additionally, those hardcovers were all priced relatively high. But now there are umpteen editions offered from POD "publishers" thanks to the expiration of its American copyright making the book an easy target for biblio-pirates looking to make a quick buck off a dead writer's work. The book may also be available free online or in some eBook format but I never bother checking for those.

FFB: The Body Vanishes - Jacquemard-Sénécal

While the first book the French writing team calling themselves Jacquemard-Sénécal wrote was in fact the second book they had published (Le onzième petit nègre, 1977), their first published book was apparently considered to be more conventional by the publisher though no less ingenious. It won for them the coveted Prix du Quai des Orfevres, the French mystery writer's prize, in 1977. While The Eleventh Little Indian (as it was published in the US) was considered "too daring" I think Le Crime de la Maison Grün or, as the English publishers redubbed the book, The Body Vanishes (1976) is far more daring. The trickery employed in this debut (yet really their second book) and the gasp inducing solution surpass what the two men did in their Agatha Christie tribute.

A drowned woman's body disappears from a river bank. It reappears in the locked and burglarized workshop of Wotan Grün, an antiquarian bookseller. The only thing noted to be missing is a rare 15th century incunabulum, the envy of several collectors and the bookseller's competitors. The woman is soon identified as the lover of Wotan's son Denis, the morose and cynical black sheep of the Grün household. As the intriguing investigation proceeds the entire household is enveloped in a world of treachery and thievery, murder attempts and suicide, and -- believe it or not -- the search for an alchemy formula for turning lead into gold.

The book introduces their series character Lancelot Dullac (cute name, huh?), a police detective who works alongside another policeman named Holz. The detection in this book is mostly of the Q&A type, though there are several instances of Golden Age type originality and cleverness in the few scenes that involve physical evidence. Most notable among those portions is a second impossible murder disguised as a suicide that involves some rigged machinery that John Dickson Carr might have dreamed up.

Once again on display a plethora of plot devices and motifs found in the work of their idol Agatha Christie. There are allusions to Evil Under the Sun, Peril at End House, Murder at the Vicarage and the many stage related mysteries she wrote. The two writers come from a theater background and once again dig into their trunk of stage tricks and illusions to bamboozle the reader with dazzling misdirection. There is even some dizzying business with rifles and bullets that reminded me of Erle Stanley Gardner's gun crazy plots. All in all plenty of wizardry and plot machinations to appeal to any fan of the puzzle driven detective novel.

*   *   *

UPDATE:  I have eliminated a sentence above that is untrue. There is no "rigged machinery that John Dickson Carr might have dreamed up" in this book.  I confused this with another book that had a similar death, misinterpreted a sentence including the phrase "machinery the murderer had constructed" to be taken literally, and completely misremembered the final death in the book. Utterly embarrassed by this blatant example of my often addled memory.