Frederic Dard - "Unknown" Noir Crime Author

From The Guardian:

He was a close friend of Georges Simenon, the author whose fictional detective, Jules Maigret, became a TV hit in 1960s Britain. But despite writing 300 crime thrillers and selling 200 million books in his native France, Frédéric Dard remains almost unknown in Britain. Not one of his novels is in print in English.

But all that is about to change. Sixteen years after Dard’s death, a British publisher is gambling on him being the next big thing in detective fiction. On 2  June, Pushkin Press will publish Bird in a Cage under its Vertigo crime imprint, the first in a planned series of Dard’s psychological “novels of the night”.

For me, Dard's books offer the reader a new take on the genre of noir fiction as his books are translated in English courtesy of Pushkin Press.  And whilst late to his works, I am slowly working my way through those that had, to date, been translated and published.

My Reviews of:

The Executioner Weeps

Crush (also know as The Wretches)

The King of Fools

Bird in a Cage

The Wicked Go To Hell

Read more on Dard:

@ 1843 Magazine

@ New York Times

@ Crime Reads

@ New York Times (again)

@ Wikipedia

Review - The King of Fools by Frederic Dard

".. what was better? to be a murderer or a gullible fool?.."

A mix-up of of cars and an encounter with an Englishwoman, Marjorie, sends Jean-Marie Valaise's mundane world into a tail-spin. After a brief liaison, she returns home - he writes to her, he goes to her - is she there or not? A jealous husband, a dead body, an arrest.   "... every mystery is an illusion..."  Can Jean-Marie find his way out of the nightmare that follows.

Yet another outstanding tale from Dard.