‘Le Cycle de Nestor’: Patrick Pécherot’s Rewriting of Léo Malet

Abstract

The history of the roman noir in France is, from its beginnings, one of influence. During the German Occupation of 1940–1944 American films and novels were banned. Nevertheless, American hard-boiled detective fiction became extremely popular after the Liberation, and it was not long before French writers began to imitate the genre. While the first works published by Gallimard’s crime fiction series — the Série noire, established in 1945 by Marcel Duhamel — were translations into French of works originally published in English by British authors,¹ French authors soon began to write novels in the hard-boiled style. Early examples of the genre were imitations, even pastiches, of the American model: authors often adopted US pseudonyms and set their novels in America.² Of this generation of writers, Léo Malet is considered a pioneer of an authentically French roman noir, ‘le père du roman noir français’ (‘the father of the French roman noir’).³ An avant-garde writer associated with the Parisian Surrealists in the 1920s and 1930s, Malet began his crime writing career during World War II under the pseudonym Frank Harding, which appeared on a series of novels featuring American investigative journalist Johnny Metal. However, the publication of his 1943 novel 120 rue de la Gare marked a new departure, with a setting much closer to home: Paris during the Occupation, and with a central character, private detective Nestor Burma, who was recognizably, not to say emphatically, French.