Michel Lebrun
Author of Woody Allen. Seine Filme, sein Leben.
About the Author
Works by Michel Lebrun
Le guide du "polar" (Collection Les Guides culturels Syros) (French Edition) (1987) 4 copies, 1 review
De val slaat dicht 3 copies
未亡人 3 copies
まちがえた番号・ストリッパーの死 3 copies
L'Année du polar, Tome 1988 : L'Année du polar : Tous les romans policiers publiés dans… (1988) 1 copy
Verbinding verbroken 1 copy
L'année du polar 1987: L'almanach du crime: tous les romans policiers publiés dans l'année: Suivi… (1986) 1 copy
Une prière pour Owen 1 copy
La tête du client 1 copy
Véronal 1 copy
Le rescapé 1 copy
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Gender
- male
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Reviews
Awards
Statistics
- Works
- 45
- Members
- 81
- Popularity
- #222,754
- Rating
- 4.2
- Reviews
- 2
- ISBNs
- 36
- Languages
- 3
[Le Guide du Polar]: Histoire du Roman Policier Français by Michel Lebrun and J.P. Schweighaeuser.
Only when I saw the book did I realise I wanted a guide to french crime writing in the mid 20th century, which also supplied pocket histories of popular authors and their best work. This was published in 1987 and so by no means up to date, but was perfect for me. The first chapter is pre-polar: that is before 1900 and a chance to drag in such famous names as Honoré de Balzac, Françoise Vidocq and of course Emile Zola. The second chapter covers Maurice LeBlanc and Arsène Lupin as well as the mystery story writer Gaston Leroux. There is an interesting chapter on the magazines that sprung up from 1910 onwards like Fantômas and the authors that supplied them with short stories or serials. The first real detective novels appeared after 1920 with authors such as Gabriel Bernard, André Armandy, H.G. Magog. It also saw the first 'collection' of books specialising in the genre "Masque" and paved the way for other publishing houses to follow suit.
!930-1940 was the golden age for detective novels; Georges Simenon of course but also Pierre Véry, Claude Aveline, Steeman, and Jacques Decrest. Authors tended to have more than a couple of pseudonyms and so it was useful to have the guide and google to sort them out. Typically crime writers also wrote film scripts and the book covers these as well. There is a section at the end of each chapter that gives pocket biographies of other less well known (today) authors. 1940-1950 was a more difficult period, certainly because of the war, but also because of the invasion of American crime fiction. Much energy was spent on making translations of American books. The collection called Série Noir was launched in 1945 and all the books apart from one, published between 1945-50 were translations. The American invasion continued between 1950-60, but french authors were beginning to make a comeback: Leo Malet in the 1940's with his Nestor Burma series, then Terry G Stewart pseudonym for Serge Arcuoët and Thomas Narcejac, Jean Sabran and Louis C. Thomas. However the genre was starting to widen under the influence of the American writers and Auguste Le Breton introduced his Rififi series, books with a noir edge whose criminals used gangster slang. 1960-70 saw an explosion of writing in the crime genre, which now encompassed espionage, suspense, humour, fantasy; really too much to get a handle on and plenty of new french writers in the genre including Michel Lebrun (co-author of this guide). There were plenty of authors that were new to me in this section and the final two sections that followed.
Le Guide du Polar cost me 6 euros, but I have the feeling it is going to cost me much more as I track down some of these writers. I feel quite a few lists shaping up. The book was probably only worth three stars when it appeared in 1987 as it is part of Guide Culturels Syros written for a popular market, but for me it was a 5 star read.… (more)