Sébastien Japrisot: The Art of Crime (review)

Although many would dispute Jacques Dubois’ contention in the preface to this collection that L’Été meurtrier is the ‘all-time favourite film’ of French audiences, it is undeniable that Japrisot’s work has been influential in the landscape of modern French crime writing and the film noir. This timely volume, which started life as a conference in Bristol in 2005, contains nine stimulating textual and thematic studies encompassing the whole range of his works, from his youthful period up to Un long dimanche de fiançailles (1991), thus providing a comprehensive assessment of Japrisot’s significance in contemporary popular French literature and film. The editors are to be congratulated for presenting both the academic and general reader with a sophisticated introduction and companion to his work, and especially for bringing to the attention of a new audience Japrisot’s earlier incarnation as Jean-Baptiste Rossi. It is demonstrated how Japrisot bends the rules of the genre, although whether his incursions are of equal literary weight to Modiano’s and Robbe-Grillet’s in this respect is a rather more contentious assertion. Several chapters examine his œuvre within the parameters of genre fiction (in essays by Martin Hurcombe, Claire Gorrara, Susan Myers, and David Bellos); however, surprisingly little account is given of his relationship with the néo-polar, as it evolves over approximately the same period. Véronique Desnain’s pertinent analysis of the presentation of women brings out the manner in which his five crime novels mediate the socio-political context; Simon Kemp’s especially informative and subtle account of Japrisot’s engagement with film (as director and screenwriter) explores the cinematic problematics of unreliable narrators; and Victoria Best brings to bear on the early ‘Rossi’ novels a psychoanalytical approach, unearthing patterns of submission and domination at operation in these fictions of murderous violence. Although a detailed bibliography and chronology would have been a useful adjunct, this is a volume which will nevertheless become indispensable to readers and students of Japrisot, and which will certainly initiate advanced study.