I didn't read this article, but from what I can understand
from the abstracts you posted, Ruth More is partly
misleading. Yes, there are no feminist PI, very few forensic
legals... On the other hand, all the rest can be easily found
in the Gallic "polars", as the colloquial term refers by its
present days meaning to the entire mystery genre, all
sub-genres included. But pretending there are no parody or
humor is a sad joke... as diversity of styles in the humor
applied to modern mysteries in France
(especially since the end of the sixties) is far more
extended than in the USA, for instance.
Also, to be noted, the big selling Tabachnik is more "scandal
orientated" than due to the writer's excellence, with books
manipulating stories with heavy "trash" tendencies.
On the other hand if there was a massive entry of young
French writers with leftist convictions in the HB/Noir domain
since the seventies, real PIs in their stories are rare birds
but this was true also all along the development of HB/Noir
lit in France (development starting after WW2). The real
cement between most of Noir French writers is a "anti
authoritarian" approach in their descriptions of the modern
society, an approach you will find even in works from authors
that are not linked to leftist ideas.
But as very few French authors are translated into English,
you will have difficulties to discover by yourself the
particularity of French HB/Noir... unless you are able to
read French.
E.Borgers Hard-Boiled Mysteries http://www.geocities.com/Athens/6384
At 05:25 18-06-03 -0700, you wrote:
>
> In case you haven't seen it already, you might want
to know about an
>awfully good article in TLS (the 5/23/2003 issue,
page 23) devoted to French
>*polar* novels. The article's author is Ruth
Morse.
> Among the bits that caught my eye were:
>
> " [...] conspicuously absent in France are the
eco-thriller,
> the feminist PI, the locked room, the forensic
legals, and the
> panoply of Anglo-Saxon parody and humour, although
two
> big-selling women, Andrea H. Japp and Maud
Tabachnik, imitate
> American trends in graphic violence."
>
> "In France the tradition of hard-boiled detection
has always
> been associated with the Left (even if the lone PI,
who is not
> part of organized political resistance could be
classified as
> a radical conservative.)"
>
> (The second comment might be a good explanation for
Jean-Luc
> Godard's having, alledgedly, based his 1966 "Made in
U.S.A." on
> Richard Stark's "The Jugger.")
>
> This is almost entirely new teritory to me. One of
the names Morse
>mentions, Jean-Claude Izzo, can be found in the
Rara-Avis archives. But
>does anyone have anthing to say about authors Claude
Amoz or Dominique
>Manotti?
>
>Chris
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