Review: The Sleeping Car Murders by Sébastien Japrisot

Synopsis: A beautiful young woman lies sprawled on her berth in the sleeping car of the night train from Marseilles to Paris. She is not in the embrace of sleep, or even in the arms of one of her many lovers. She is dead. And the unpleasant task of finding her killer is handed to an overworked, crime-weary police detective named Pierre Emile Grazziano, nicknamed Grazzi, who would rather play hide-and-seek with his little son than cat and mouse with a diabolically cunning, savage murderer. 

My first by this particular author and I can honestly say that I really enjoyed this French mystery.

Having expanded my reading to authors scattered far and wide, writing about their own countries, and all with their own distinctive style, I was able to quite easily adapt to this author's style of writing. It would be imprudent of the reader to assume that all author's write the same - and much also comes down to the quality of the translation.

I was initially drawn to this particular tome as it put me in mind of Agatha Christie - which is no bad thing. The premise is quite simple - a woman is murdered on an overnight train travelling from Marseille to Paris; the suspects are narrowed down to those who shared the sleeping coach with her; the police investigate; a motive and killer are eventually revealed and the mystery is solved. Simple - maybe; interestingly formatted - very much so (see below).

This could fall under the auspices of a "police procedural" novel - as we follow Detective Pierre Grazziano (or "Grazzi" to use the nickname he is often referred by) and his offsider, Gaubert.  I really enjoyed the narrative and the format - each chapter heading was the berth number of each of the passengers. 

And the passengers themselves are a motley bunch: a salesman, a struggling actress, a truck driver, a typist, a housewife.  As each of the passengers is duly investigated to check for a connection to the victim, to pry out that piece of the puzzle or secret they are withholding, or establish a motive - one by one they are .... eliminated.  It seems that Grazzi is always that one step behind but eventually there is light at the end of the tunnel.

As I mentioned, I really did enjoy this and love expanding my reading beyond the standard UK and US offerings, exploring how other writers present similar mysteries on their own patch!

Trans: Francis Price

Pierre de L'Estoile and his World in the Wars of Religion - Tom Hamilton

From Oxford University Press: 

The Wars of Religion embroiled France in decades of faction, violence, and peacemaking in the late sixteenth century. When historians interpret these events they inevitably depend on sources of information gathered by contemporaries, none more valuable than the diaries and collection of Pierre de L'Estoile (1546-1611), who lived through the civil wars in Paris and shaped how they have been remembered ever since. Taking him out of the footnotes, and demonstrating his significance in the culture of the late Renaissance, this is the first life of L'Estoile in any language. It examines how he negotiated and commemorated the conflicts that divided France as he assembled an extraordinary collection of the relics of the troubles, a collection that he called 'the storehouse of my curiosities'. The story of his life and times is the history of the civil wars in the making. 

Focusing on a crucial individual for understanding Reformation Europe, this study challenges historians' assumptions about the widespread impact of confessional conflict in the sixteenth century. L'Estoile's prudent, non-confessional responses to the events he lived through and recorded were common among his milieu of Gallican Catholics. His life-writing and engagement with contemporary news, books, and pictures reveals how individuals used different genres and media to destabilise rather than fix confessional identities. Bringing together the great variety of topics in society and culture that attracted L'Estoile's curiosity, this volume rethinks his world in the Wars of Religion.

read more @ Oxford University Press & University of Cambridge

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.