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Reviewed by:
  • French Crime Fiction
  • Martin Hurcombe
French Crime Fiction. Edited by Claire Gorrara. (European Crime Fictions). Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2009. x + 142 pp. Hb £75.00.

Reading seamlessly as an introduction to French crime fiction from its origins to the present, this volume includes six essays that point to the genre’s national specificity whilst acknowledging its productive relationship with external influences. David Platten traces the genre’s difference from Anglo-American detective fiction to its very beginnings, arguing that a distinction could be made in the nineteenth century between British detective fiction’s insistence upon the validity of physical evidence and a French distrust of appearances, a Cartesian legacy. The late Christopher Shorley, writing of Simenon, therefore argues that, in French crime fiction, ‘comprehension [End Page 238] counts for more than apprehension’ (p. 45). Moreover, whilst much early British detective fiction is concerned with the restoration of order à la Marple, there has long been an association between French crime fiction and a tradition of social protest. This comes to the fore in essays by Claire Gorrara and Susanna Lee examining the post-war roman noir and the néo-polar respectively. In the former, Gorrara observes, the perspective of the marginalized is adopted through the figure of the detective as maverick commentator in an adaptation of the American hard boiled. (p. 58). The noir is therefore ‘the “missing link” in a genealogy of French crime fiction [. . .] connecting with the highly politicized crime fiction’ of the néo-polar. The latter, Lee contends, reflects the revolutionary spirit of May 1968, but also its distrust of authority, society, and the meta-narratives underlying these, although, arguably, its youthful idealism degenerates in the néo-polar into jaded nihilism. The genre’s relationship to the sociohistoric and its increased predilection for the perspective of the marginalized, Véronique Desnain argues, in an essay that dispels the myth that female crime writers are but a recent phenomenon in France, has allowed these to adapt the genre in order to illustrate its and society’s gender bias (p. 96). Indeed, all the essays in this volume attest to the malleability and hence the longevity of a genre that, as Simon Kemp argues in an essay examining the parodying, and ultimately adoption, of the genre by OuLiPo writers, nouveaux romanciers, and more recently writers of the mainstream, provides ‘a form robust and versatile enough to investigate the deepest aspects of human nature, to touch on abstract questions of the philosophy of knowledge and to inquire into the nature of fiction itself ’ (p. 121). This highly accessible, well written volume constitutes, despite its brevity, an extremely informative analysis of the genre. Each essay is followed by an extract from one of the novels discussed (sadly only in translation, however) and there is also an annotated bibliography. In emphasising the genre’s flexibility, its relationship to rapidly evolving socio-historic contexts, and its dialogue with other cultural forms, this volume avoids the rigid codification of the genre that earlier analysis had sought to impose upon it, inviting the reader to revisit this rich and varied field, but also, in its conclusion, pointing to new, emergent directions within it.

Martin Hurcombe
University of Bristol
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