Léo Malet: Énigme aux Folies-Bergère

You would of course expect a book written in 1952 to be something of a peddle back in time, although this 1978 cover, with the bare-breasted woman, seems to conflict somewhat with the use of language, which is sometimes unbelievably prissy in its censorship: we have a number of unfinished words or expressions, for instance: 'emm....' (for 'emmerder'), 'm'eng...' (for 'm'engueuler', even 'B... D...' for 'Bon Dieu'. Scheesh! You'd hardly believe this was written in a country in which (in the nineteenth century) Zola (in Germinal) wrote about a guy screwing a menstruating girl against a wall, where Aragon wrote Le con d'Irène, or where Courbet notoriously painted a magnificent female sexual organ, and on and on ad infinitum.

Not that there's anything prissy about the actual content here: Superintendent Raffin thinks bromide would be in order on seeing a sample of the naked girls in the Folies-Bergère dressing room, and as for the once-beautiful and now alcoholic Clara pulling the bedclothes away from her to reveal her one leg and stump and ask him who would want her now....

Crime is not my usual genre but then everyone should take a literary holiday now and then, and Léo Malet – very much a self-educated person and in his day a hugely successful writer – is well worth reading. There are murders all over the place, there's a lot of drinking and (particularly on the part of Raffin) a lot of thinking going on, the plot may creak noisily in places (such as hiding the jewels on the imitation horses at the Folies-Bergère, but what the hell?

Malet actually writes very well, and is noted for his black humour. I particularly liked the way Raffin, on receiving the post mortem report from the lab team, which reveal that the murdered Humbert Courvoisier lunched on beefsteak and chips and red wine, notes that he then took over three grams of lead as a digestive. Another observation of his is that the grass François Laumont, found dead on his doorstep, was 'a natural gossip of the underworld silenced by a twenty-five centimetre blade'.

And how can I ever forget the two visits and all the time it took to detect Malet's Grave:

Paris 2015: Léo Malet, Cimetière Châtillon (92)

'LÉO MALET 1909 . 1996'

Léo Malet brought a new kind of detective fiction to the market, particularly with his creation Nestor Burma, the private 'detective de choc' who (like the early Malet) was an anarchist (and something of a sexist avant la lettre), and is best known in the series Les Nouveaux Mystères de Paris. The name is a reference to Eugene Sue's Mystères de Paris, and each novel takes place in a different arrondissement of Paris, although as there are only fifteen novels in the series, five arrondissements are missed out.

Malet's most well-known novel is probably Brouillard au pont de Tolbiac (1954), part of his Les Nouveaux Mystères de Paris series and set in the 13th arrondissement. Running a close second, though, must be the wonderfully titled Micmac moche au Boul' Mich' (1957).

In 1948 Malet was the first writer to win the Grand Prix for detective fiction, and in 1958 he received the Grand Prix for black humour.

(NB. For anyone seeking Léo Malet's grave, it's important not to heed the words one commentor has made on the Sur les pas des Écrivains site: contrary to what the person wrote about Malet's grave being in Division 15, it is in fact in Division 12, knowledge of which could have saved us a lot of time.)