“The three novels of Le Labyrinth were the only ones to see the light of day,” he told Michel Lebrun. “Of course, I did commit other crimes than those published, but I’m under no illusion, they’re definitely outdated.” His son confirmed that the three published were, unfortunately, the only ones to survive. What other marvels of superb logic and subtle wit did they engender? We shall never know.
The only element which might shine light on his tastes and his culture is his great capacity for reading: he was, before the war, an avid admirer of detective novels which he read in English, and of which he had a great collection. He probably read, before his compatriots, some of the great classics of Agatha Christie, Anthony Berkeley, Ellery Queen, and John Dickson Carr. His knowledge of the genre was apparent in a postscript to his letter to Lebrun, where he noted: “Have you noticed that I’m not the only one to have written out of boredom? Freeman Wills Crofts and S.S. Van Dine, amongst others, ‘profited’ from their sickness.”
Published in 1944, Orage sur la Grande Semaine joined the ranks of the classics of detective fiction, to the point of including, in the manner of Ellery Queen, a Challenge to the Reader. It was a model of the genre, posing a mind-boggling locked room puzzle. Flirting with the fantastic—alchemy, magic, and a secret society—it also had all the ingredients to please avid lovers of the mysteries of Clayton Rawson or John Dickson Carr.
Trompe-l’œil (Spring1946) was also a conjuring trick of stunning virtuosity, describing the theft of a famous diamond, exhibited in a room under surveillance by no less than six detectives of different nationalities hired by as many insurance companies—and therefore an incorruptible assembly. Nevertheless, the jewel, authentic when placed there by its owner, turned out to be false at the end of the day. And the explanation provided by the writer was without equal in the annals of detective fiction!
Could the author surpass himself in his grandiose madness? He did so with La Treizième Balle (Spring1948) which, in addition to posing an absolutely unique locked room puzzle—a crime in a bunker with one metre thick walls, no windows, and guarded by sentries—is principally based on the fascinating theme of the serial crime.
All the great names of detective fiction have quickly understood that, in its most classical form, serial crime offers infinite prospects. For, when a mysterious killer commits a series of crimes whose victims seem to have nothing to do with each other, the problem of motive is crucial.
Such is the case here, with the exploits of a killer dubbed the man in grey by the press, who commits murder in ten great French cities: Nancy, Dijon, Reims, Marseille, Orléans, Lyon, Toulouse, Arras, Nantes, le Mans... Scattered throughout the country, the victims all had different occupations and came from different strata of society. What is the mysterious thread they have in common? And when the investigators, after a breathless chase, discover it, the reader is plunged into even deeper stupefaction! Make no mistake, the criminal is by no means insane, and his incredible behaviour is the result of a logical plan. But the diabolical cleverness of the author is to know how, in the middle of the book, to reveal the hidden motive to the reader, so as to increase his bewilderment and greatly arouse his interest. Similar to what the great Agatha Christie did in the classic of the genre, The A.B.C. Murders (1936), in which a salesman, a waitress, an art collector and a spectator in a cinema are murdered seemingly haphazardly before the investigators discover that the victims’ names are... in alphabetic order. Or Ellery Queen in Cat of Many Tails, in which the ages of the victims, who do not know each other and come from different social classes, decrease as the list increases and the criminal, nicknamed “The Cat” by the press, continues his deadly activities....
There is, in the best serial killer novels, a kind of allegory of Destiny: the story follows the meanderings of a mysterious mechanism whose hidden workings invoke the ideas of inexorability and fate , as if something unknown had unleashed a criminal process which nobody after that could stop.
Finally, a small linguistic detail which English-speaking readers fluent in French will realise: the amateur detective in all three novels is named Bob Slowman. The author’s name Lanteaume is pronounced phonetically in French as lent homme, which translates to slow man in English.
But let me not keep you any longer from reading this fascinating work. I envy my transatlantic and trans-channel friends discovering this exceptional novel, finally translated into English.
Roland Lacourbe
Paris 2020
Roland Lacourbe is an internationally recognised expert on locked room/impossible crime mysteries. J.M.P
Spectators who, out of politeness, applaud bad theatre are themselves performing good theatre.
EVREINOFF
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
I have used the French term for professions and places mentioned in the text, in order to preserve the Gallic flavour. Below is a list of correspondences:
juge d’instruction = examining magistrate
Le
