Etienne, thanks for your extremely informative post. I should
have joined this list a long time ago. I do read French - but
I'm quite slow! And it's almost impossible to find
information about this kind of thing in English.
--- Etienne Borgers <
freeweb@rocketmail.com> wrote:
> If spy novels of the kind attract you, you will
have
> to read some by Paul Kenny with his
character:
> Francis
> Copland, French spy. To replace Bruce when he
left,
> FN
> asked to one of their writers to create a new
spy
> series. The Belgian writer took a pseudonym
Paul
> Kenny
> for the new series. After something like 10
novels
> he
> teamed up with another Belgian writer and
still
> under
> the Kenny alias they produced hugely successful
spy
> novels with Copland as the hero.
You don't happen to know the names of these Belgian writers,
do you? Or if they're still alive? I write for a magazine in
Brussels, and that might just make a terrific story.
> After 130 titles,
> in
> 1973, FN created a special collection
publishing
> only
> the Copland novels. The total sales for
Copland's
> were
> never really known. But in 1965 they had
already
> sold
> a total of 16 million copies since the
beginning.
> The success of these novels was tremendous for
the
> size of the French market.
The earlier OSS117 books also claim 16 million copies sold.
On the later ones, this moves up to 55 million. It seems
somewhat extraordinary to me that a writer who has had over
50 million copies in print is not in print anymore or widely
translated, let alone read. Donald Hamilton is thought to
have had around 40 million copies of his Matt Helm series in
print to date, yet his publishers aren't interested in the
latest one. With Penguin reprinting Fleming's work, can't
some enterprising publishing house reprint some of these
guys? There must be a market, surely.
> If you are interested by real hard-boiled/noir
lit.
> try to read the recent French production
(I
> understand
> you read French?) by authors that were never
(or
> rarely) translated in English and you will
also
> discover with them how a different culture
handles
> this genre.
I'll do that.
> You will find a few names of authors on my web
site
> POLAR NOIR, at:
> http://www.geocities.com/polarnoir
Looks excellent.
> And… welcome to the list.
Thanks. Jeremy
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