In this continuation of Fantomas, the further adventures of Juve are narrated and tell of his efforts to capture the most notorious criminal on earth. Fantomas appears as the leader of a gang of Apaches.
Marcel Allain (1885-1970) was a French writer mostly remembered today for his co-creation with Pierre Souvestre of the fictional arch-villain and master criminal Fantômas.
The son of a Parisian bourgeois family, Allain studied law before becoming a journalist. He then became the assistant of Souvestre, who was already a well-known figure in literary circles. In 1909, the two men published their first novel, Le Rour. Investigating Magistrate Germain Fuselier, later to become a recurring character in the Fantômas series, appears in the novel.
Then, in February 1911, Allain and Souvestre embarked upon the Fantômas book series at the request of publisher Arthème Fayard, who wanted to create a new monthly pulp magazine. The success was immediate and lasting.
After Souvestre’s death in February 1914, Allain continued the Fantômas saga alone, then launched several other series, such as Tigris, Fatala, Miss Téria and Férocias, but none garnered the same popularity as Fantômas.
Fantômas has become a legend. I first heard about him years ago. But this is the first time I have read any fiction in which he appears. He is a master villain and relentlessly pursued by Inspector Juve, who must surely be one of the oddest detectives in crime fiction. He is genuinely clever (like Sherlock Holmes) and physically active (like Maigret) but he keeps getting it badly wrong. It's almost as if he wants to be outwitted by Fantômas.
This novel moves at high speed. Everyone seems to be a master of disguise. One thing that surprised me a little is that Fantômas himself (in one of his guises) sometimes shows himself to be unconfident and worried. I had assumed he was supernatural and beyond such normal emotions.
Will I ever read another novel in this series? Maybe, but I am in no rush to do so. Unlike the books of Simenon, I don't feel the beginnings of any kind of addiction here. An enjoyable and easy novel to read but I am still in two minds about its ultimate worth.
Fantomas has helped inject elements of fantasy, imagination, intrigue, breadth, mystery, and atmosphere to the squalid, degenerate, and unrepentently vicious drug-related shootings in my area.
Of course those guys are living their own dramatic fantasies...
The Fantomas novels are totally the literary equivalent of those weekly cliffhanger movie serials in which at the end of each episode the hero - or the hero's girlfriend - would be tied to a railway track or a conveyor belt leading towards a plank-cutting giant circular saw with absolutely no possibility of escape.
The writing is breakneck paced, there's absolutely no time given to the finer elements of plot or character or tying up loose ends. These books were written buy two authors, each writing alternate chapters and published at an incredible speed - 32 of them were published in 3 years!
In this one we have a house in which a fake study is taken down in an elevator and fills with choking sand, the Simplon Orient Express train used as a weapon, fake mother superiors, exploding country houses, an american prize fighter, a british upper class heiress, death by boa constrictor and people in burning barrels of brandy.
It's breathtakingly fast-paced, Fantomas himself has no character, he's just pure evil, with none of the characterisation or moral dilemmas that you get in the Arsene Lupin stories. All that Allain and Souvestre are concerned with is what new, weird and wonderful ways they can get Fantomas to extort, murder, kidnap and blackmail - there's no "why", just "how".
Great fun - but the sheer lack of literary skill dictates that it gets no more than 3 stars.
Originally published in French in 1911, this title has also been translated as The Silent Executioner. It is the second installment in the series Fantômas, which I stumbled upon a few years ago. I think not many series are named after the criminal rather than the detective. As such, we know that the criminal Fantômas doesn't get caught by Juve, the police investigator whose life work seems to be in catching him.
Both of these characters are masters of disguise. The reader is not supposed to know which named character is Fantômas - I did think I had a bead on him, but there was a surprise for me anyway. Juve reveals himself to his journalist sidekick Fandor. Juve and Fandor are always a step behind Fantômas, who is not only a diabolical criminal, but also finds the chase itself exhilarating.
The story, of course, is all plot and the characterizations are pretty superficial. The prose is OK for the genre, and especially that it was first published more than 100 years ago. I was surprised that the dialogue isn't stiff. I'll be happy to read another installment of the series - they are quick and a fun read. Still, they aren't more than a middlin' 3-stars.
I wanted to like this book more; it had everything––french detectives dressing up in disguises (old women, the indubitable false mustache, et al), heavyweight champions, hidden chamber shenanigans, masked villains, crazy capers... I juss dunno why it was so impossible at times to drink pages. Perhaps the short chapters that begin and end almost like short stories makes it hard to build any true momentum, and the ESL-translation didnt help much... but for those who want ONLY PLOT you could do so much worse than L'es Expoloits de Juvenile.
I can imagine this made into a Murder, She Wrote-style TV show, with each chapter being an episode. Would be really cool. The atmosophere and the theatrics are, of course, cliche, but they are also everything a detective-genre-lovin-sonofabitch wants, while hovering over all (although not appearing until the literal halfway mark) is Fantômas. No, not Mr. Bungle's numinous side project, but the stealth assassin himself, Gurn aka Chaleck aka Loupart aka ???? Truly one of the greatest detective noir villains. Fantômas is a concept; and few baddies are as good as that. >:)
A wonderful book full of so many many plots, schemes and double crosses that your head will spin. The resolution of the murders and the mysterious house are the kind of stuff that you could never get away with nowadays, but since I hate most modern crime fiction, I thought it was brilliant. The Fantomas books are an odd mix of Agatha Christe mystery and cliffhanger serial. Very little effort is made to ever explain what makes Fantomas tick, but despite the fact that he's basically pure evil, he's a fascinating character and you find yourself worrying when it looks like he's going to get caught.
Absurd, creepy, paced like a car race, as shlocky as you expect from a Fantômas novel. Juve in particular gets more room to breathe than in the first book, it was satisfying to see him have some kind of personality. I also feel like this story has more forward motion than the first book. My main criticism is that the book could have been even more grotesque and horrible - THAT's what I read Fantômas for. A room with a torrent of sand (which is never explained further) does not sate my thirst for gruesome pulp horror.
Like the first volume of Fantaomas (translated into English) this is a must to have. Since Penguin put out the first volume, I am hoping that they will re-issue this edition as well.
This second book in the series is very much tied to the first book which is rather unfortunate that I only vaguely remember book 1! At the beginning of the book, I thought it was a different mystery but I should have known better. After all, the series is named for the villain rather than the detective.
I actually enjoyed the beginning of the novel but then as the link to the first book emerges and of course, the villain is a master of disguises, I struggled to keep up with who's who. And let's just say, my suspicions were all over the place except for the method of murder for which I pinpointed at around midway of the novel.
Overall, I think I would have liked this better if I remembered book 1 and as the book ends in a somewhat cliffhanger scene, I highly suspect that book 3 will be tied to this one.
Another great one. In this one, several of the characters have so many aliases and disguises that it's sometimes hard to keep up. Twists and turns and red herrings aplenty. I'm still surprised I was never aware of these given their popularity. Maybe they're too "common" or something, but they're really, really good. The only real complaint is my shortcoming in not being able to handle the French. The authors pick the Frenchest of French names and places that create stumbling blocks in reading for me. Still, that's on me. It's a great plot and ends in a cliff hanger that leaves no doubt there is a follow up.
This is an intriguing crime adventure story, centered around a criminal mastermind, that actually makes its crime fighting protagonists as interesting as the villain. The narrative is structured so that we don't for sure see Fantomas for most of the book, but his presence is definitely felt. Even without the omnipresent villain on the page, the exploits of Juve and Fandor are fascinating enough to read. The story twists and turns and keeps you guessing. In spite of myself, as much as I loved the detective and the reporter, I even found myself cheering a little for the bad guy.
Not quite as engaging as "Fantomas" but still fun and a super quick read. Again, you have to suspend belief that all these characters have such infallible costumes. Fantomas, Juve and others will encounter each other in various guises and no one is the wiser - it's like the "Mission: Impossible" movies. And for all of Fantomas' famous cold blooded attitude, his willingness to commit any crime, any murder, and be totally ruthless - he does have some human elements. All in all, an enjoyable series.
The second Fantomas novel picks up a few years after the first left off. The story is plot heavy to the point that any attempt to describe it would surely result in at least a few spoilers. Suffice it to say that this sequel is once again full of disguises, false identities, outrageous crimes, heists, and murders. It’s a fast paced read, never stopping the action for so much as a breath.
A more than worthy sequel to "Fantomas", this second volume in the series is if anything more colorful and outlandish than its predecessor. The redoubtable Inspector Juve, again aided by his sidekick Fandor the journalist, gets drawn into the Paris underworld by a series of mysterious crimes -- a daring robbery, a deliberate train derailment, an attempted murder in a Hospital -- and inevitably, as he pursues the disparate clues and desperate characters involved, he finds himself again drawn into the orbit of his nemesis, the fiendish, shape-shifting Fantomas. There are some head spinning plot twists and contrivances in this sequel, and ensuing revelations which this reader, at least, guessed at well before their appearance in the plot...but despite this, the feverishly paced narrative effortlessly carried me along. Then, just as it appears all has been explained, the mysteries unraveled, and the titular villain is on the verge of capture, the plot lurches into a wild denouement that is sure to raise any reader's heart rate as it races to its explosive, cliff-hanging finish.
This edition, the only unabridged one available in English, is evidently cheaply printed to order by a website publisher, and it's very rough. Typographic and punctuation errors abound. It's a testament to the original material that despite this, I glossed over these frequent hiccups as I eagerly devoured the story. One wishes, however, that the book were given the copy editing it deserves. I still applaud www.lulu.com for making this text (and several successive ones in the series) available in English, but this edition in particular loses one star for its execrable production values. My copy also features a different cover which appears to be a rather ham-fisted pastiche of Fantomas clip art, rather than the one pictured above which is much more faithful to the original jacket of "Juve Contre Fantômas".
Update, January 2015: good news! The Antipodes press has just issued the first 5 Fantomas titles in a cleanly edited and handsome edition of trade paperbacks. I might start with Penguin's "Fantomas" for its John Ashbery introduction, but certainly the Antipodes reissue is infinitely superior to any of the Lulu Press/Beltham Press editions and is your best bet for the next four volumes. (There is also another excellent option for volume 3, "The Corpse Who Kills", by Solar Books/Solar Research Archive, which includes a nice essay on Fantomas and the Surrealists.) I've heard Antipodes may publish volumes 6 and 7 sometime in the future, and I only hope it happens soon!
I am a great fan of Louis Feuillade's film serial 'Fantomas', so, naturally, coming across this book, it couldn't resist the opportunity to read it.
That was my first mistake.
There's something deeply wrong with this book. The first three quarters are a good example of the utter mystery variety of detective story - not who dun it, because we know that, but rather how did they do it? A complex web is built up, promising all kinds of exciting denouement. But then, something happens, the pace changes, and we get a cursory conclusion in which everything is explained and nothing, characters suddenly die or get killed off for no obvious reason, and, out of the blue, suddenly Fantomas appears and starts killing everyone with boa constrictors. One scene, which in the film takes up a long, tense scene, where Fantomas hides from pursuit down a well, using a broken bottle to breathe from beneath the surface of the water, here is thrown away in five lines. Did the authors suddenly realise they were running out of space?
What's really peculiar is the way that characters just vanish. The 'heroine' (sort of) has been gradually developing from a bad girl to a woman with a sense of ethics, who has a fascinating developing relationship with an American boxer, in which both are too nice (in the other sense of the term, as in 'nice and accurate') to simply leap into bed. And then . . . we are informed that she is a prostitute really, the boxer sets her up as his official mistress, and the snake gets her. That's it. Both characters, who promised much more, vanish from view.
So I was disappointed. Very disappointed. So I think, and this would be my advice to you all, I will stick to Feuillade, whose genius kept tension at the highest level.
OBVIOUSLY THIS WAS WEIRD AS HELL. I’m not convinced I didn’t dream the whole thing. It’s certainly dream-logic that drives it. Disguises come on and off, names change, houses have duplicate rooms, Fantômas is always lurking around the next corner. SNAKES. The thing this most reminded me of was The Man Who Was Thursday, though it drives the same effect toward an opposite destination.
Kind of curious to read more of these. This was the second out of god only knows how many, and it gives the impression that it constitutes a brief period of becoming before Fantômas and Juve ascend to some permanent apotheosis of unreality, becoming a sort of murderous Krazy and Ignatz on whom the changes can be rung ad infinitum. I don’t know if that’s actually what happens with the later books, but I hope it is.
(I'm wondering if I should just abandon the star ratings on this thing, because they really don't line up with my values about reading. This may not have been particularly "good," and a lot of it dragged, but I like having read it and thought it was fascinating.)
I had been looking for this book for several years now, though admittedly not very hard. How can anyone who loves crime not be intrigued by the cult of Fantomas? He is evil, a sociopath, a brutal killer and a master of disguise. His crimes are ingenious and a bit surreal, his motives murky at best. He is more than a little like a comic book villain. The book is very entertaining, but I suppose given the hyperbolic praise often accorded Fantomas that I was expecting a crime fiction Maldoror, and while Fantomas is a bit more extreme than most of his contemporaries, he is rooted firmly in the pulp story tradition.
My second Fantomas book in a month. I don't think obsession is too strong a word.
These books are totally insane. This one isn't as tightly plotted as the first (which wasn't exactly the Usual Suspects when it came to logic), but it has some crazier shit: rooms on elevators identical to the rooms below. Rooms that fill with sand to suffocate our heroes. Trap doors. Boa constrictors used as murder weapons. A cast of characters that include doctors, nurses, Mother Superiors, world champion boxers, gangland leaders, reporters, movie stars, prostitutes, British aristocracy.
And, of course, disguises! Lots and lots of disguises!
These are all available on Kindle... check 'em out.
The 2nd book in the Fantomas series, Juve encounters a criminal gang that he believes is headed by Fantomas, believed to be dead by the rest of France. Juve risks life and reputation as he tries to bring Fantomas to heel.
This book employs more mechanical trickery than the first, with some gadgets and some intricate mechanical traps. The story moves quickly, in multiple directions that slowly coalesce into a single thread.
Multiple versions of this novel are available on Libriox.
I've known about Fantomas for years, though this is the first I've read of him. The narrative is dominated by police inspector Juve and the news reporter Fandor. as they attempt to foil Fantomas' schemes. Some interesting twists and turns although I found the characters not very engaging - maybe due to the translation?
The writing in this one isn't as good as the previous book, but it's still a fun crime story with some delicious ridiculousness thrown in. I particularly liked the stuff with the boa constrictor and the cliffhanger ending.