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RARA-AVIS: Leo Malet ; French HB; Noir (long)
Hi to the group,
I'm rather busy so I cannot find enough time to follow rara discussions as
much as I want to.
Taking the "ethnic" partition of crime novels given by Lo Leehman speaking
of the "polar", the French way for crime novels and HB,
Bill Denton introduced a very interesting French writer: Leo Malet.
If they finally published his 'Mysteres' in English you should go for some
of them. Malet is Noir, even in the Burma series.
For those not knowing him well. I copy here one of my recent posting to r.a.m:
Quote:
=======
chamaret@aol.com (Chamaret) wrote:
>Has anyone read any Leo Malet mysteries ?
>Each one is set in a different arrondisement of Paris. . .
>Mostly 40's 50's noir stuff, thanks CAra
My posting:
==========
The series you refer to is a kind of cycle of novels, by Malet (French
writer), that takes Paris as a important part of the plot. Title of
the series: Les Nouveaux Mysteres de Paris (The New Paris' Mysteries)
- obvious reference to the famous 'feuilleton' : Les Mysteres de Paris
by Eugene Sue, successfull series published in the French newspapers
of the early 20th century.
However, Malet is writing real mystery novels where his P.I. Nestor
Burma is the central character, close to the hard-boiled genre in some
episodes.
The second important character, Paris, appears most of the time in the
title itself by references to the different districts and always as an
important background for the action.
The first novel of the series: Le Soleil se leve derriere le Louvre-
The sun rises behind the Louvre was published in France in 1954.
Malet produced 15 novels for the cycle and 5 more were planned but
never produced. The last novel was published in 1959: L'envahissant
cadavre de la plaine Monceau- The corpse of the Monceau plain.
IMO the best of the series remains: Brouillad au Pont de Tolbiac- Fog
on Tolbiac's bridge.
Les eaux Troubles de javel (Javel's troubled waters) and
La Nuit de Saint-Germain-des-Pres [The Night of St Germain-des-Pres]
are amongst the top ones as well.
But the whole series is interesting and well written.
Leo Malet is one of the greatest French Mystery writer mixing
intrigues, action, hard-boiled characters and black humor [humour
noir]. Passionated by popular fiction he started to write mystery
novels during the German occupation of France in WW2, using
English/American aliasses (as it was often the case for Belgian or
French writers during that period) as the German occupation banned any
original English or American books to be published... and there was a
high demand for mystery novels since the thirties when translation of
English and American mysteries were successfully introduced to France
and Belgium.
Before WW2 he was very close to the Parisian movement for Surrealism
and published some articles and poems of Surrealism inspiration.
His youg adulthood (he was born in 1909) was very close to the
political movements of French Anarchists and libertarians. Mainly
because of this, now that Malet is dead (1996), there is a wave of false
reproaches concerning his conduct during WW2, spread by second rate
writers and journalists in France recently. This kind of vicious
destruction of writers is unfortunately a French national sport!!
Besides the "Mysteries..." series he published other novels with
Nestor Burma as character, as well as some Noir novels mixing
surrealistic settings and desperate moods.
Malet is a character by himself and you should check for his
autobiography published in 1990 in France: La Vache Enragee - The Mad
Cow.
I do not know if there are easy available translations of his works in
English, nor where they were published (if any).
I cannot grantee that the novels were published with the English
titles I give here -being litteral translation of the French title.
E.Borgers
UNQUOTE
==========
There is a good Website, in French by a Belgian amateur, giving a
comprehensive list of Malet's books: (site easy to check even if you don't
read French)
http://www.info.fundp.ac.be/~ven/burma.html
I red the 'Mysteres..." series in French and don't know the English version.
Just to mention: I prepare chapters for some 'foreign' writers of interest,
and will publish this in my HARD-BOILED MYSTERIES Website.... soon.
This message is already long enough. I will give my 2 cents to the Noir/HB
classification "a la francaise" in a separate one.
Cheers to all
E.Borgers
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/6384/
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