Demouzon is quite good in some of his novels but he's not of
the same league as Manchette, and certainly not as innovative
in the French noir genre.
I can understand that somebody is not liking Manchette's work
for personal reasons, but putting him aside because he
created a kind of vacuum in the French mystery scene is pure
fiction... or playing riddles. Some French authors tried to
mimic Manchette, but without any genius nor real success.
Manchette's influence was more in the way to approach the
genesis of a novel, and its purpose, as a writer. And also to
pay more attention to style and construction of a mystery
novel. In that sense he was influential. Also in the way to
treat subjects that were connected to the French reality of
the 70s and 80s (but here he was not the only promoter of
this kind of views). Be assured that beside the noir/HB
branch of mysteries in France there
are still many writers handling the other subgenres of
the mystery novel, from cozies to thrillers, historical
mysteries, gorish... just name them. The problem is that top
quality is not always found in the works of these writers,
even if the average quality is higher since the last 20
years. And in the modern French noir/HB itself there is
enough diversity as well, with voices so different that it is
difficult to link them one to another (humor, derision,
surrealism, procedural, small thugs saga, social realism,
political pamphlet ... the list is long). The recent biggest
French mysteries sales in France are from French authors
having nothing in common with Manchette and mostly outside
the noir/HB genre. So ...
Back to Demouzon, a prolific writer when compared to
Manchette, the novel I liked the best was: DERNIERE STATION
AVANT JERUSALEM (1994) (= Last stop before Jerusalem);
problem with him is that he touched many different genres of
the noir/HB field in well written novels but without real
innovation. To be noted that he also wrote novels for the
mainstream general literature.
E.Borgers Hard-Boiled Mysteries http://www.geocities;com/Athens/6384
William Denton after Xavier Lechard:
>On 10 July 2004,
x.lechard@free.fr wrote:
>
>: Let us say that I regret his own personal approach
of crime fiction had
>: such a following in France that it became the new
standard, leading to
>: near-extinction of other sub-genres. Also, I think
Alain Demouzon was
>: better than him.
>
>Hmm, a new name! I think Demouzon has only been
mentioned once before on
>the list, when Mr. Novak was looking for a couple of
English translations.
>
>
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