Casse-pipe à la Nation

Les Nouveaux Mystères de Paris #12

by Léo Malet

È maggio, a Parigi. Il XII arrondissement, un tempo teatro importante della Rivoluzione, è oggi pungolato dalla cosiddetta doccia scozzese: un acquazzone, un raggio di sole, un raggio di sole, un acquazzone… Nestor Burma è in stazione ad attendere il ritorno di Hélène da Cannes, ma dal treno la segretaria non scende. Così, il detective si mette a vagare per Parigi e finisce in un luna-park. Seguendo le gambe di una bella donna, sale sull’ottovolante, ma è ignaro di essere a sua volta pedinato: durante la corsa, viene aggredito da un passeggero seduto alle sue spalle. Neanche a dirlo, in un attimo il malcapitato viene scaraventato giù dalla giostra – e la caduta è fatale. Come se non bastasse, il detective scopre che l’anno prima una ragazza è precipitata giù dalla stessa giostra. Troppe coincidenze, per i gusti di Burma, che decide di approfondire. Ferma innanzitutto la donna che stava seguendo: il suo nome è Simone Blanchet, e ben presto si rivelerà coinvolta nella scomparsa di un bottino di 150 chili d’oro. La storia inizia così ad assumere dei contorni davvero singolari…

Genres: Noir

512 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1957

About the author

Léo Malet est né à Montpellier en 1909. Attiré par l'écriture et l'anarchie, il décide à l'âge de 16 ans de « monter » à Paris, ou pour survivre il effectue une multitude de petits métiers. En 1930, il fait la connaissance d'André Breton et découvre le surréalisme, dont il devient un familier. Après la guerre, Léo Malet rencontre Louis Chavance qui lui suggère d'écrire des romans policiers, un genre encore inexistant en France. Malet produit alors d'alertes contrefaçons de Hard boiled américains qu'il signe des pseudonymes de Frank Harding ou Léo Latimer. En 1943, il publie sous son véritable nom, 120 rue de la gare, un roman policier très français qui met en scène pour la première fois l'illustre Nestor Burma. C'est en 1953, lors d'une promenade, que Léo Malet aura l'idée de faire de son privé un nouveau « piéton de Paris ». Le soleil naît derrière le Louvre inaugure la série des Nouveaux Mystères de Paris, un an après. Chroniques réalistes de la vie des quartiers parisiens, Les Nouveaux Mystères de Paris donnent définitivement à son personnage ses lettres de noblesse. Avec 55 titres (dont 29 consacrés à Nestor Burma), Léo Malet a bien mérité des Lettres françaises. Il est mort en 1996.

(source: Pocket.fr)


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Leo Malet was born in Montpellier. He had little formal education and began work as a cabaret singer at "La Vache Enragee" in Montmartre, Paris in 1925.

In the 1930s, he was closely aligned with the Surrealists, and was close friends with André Breton, René Magritte and Yves Tanguy, amongst others. During this time, he published several volumes of poetry.

He died in Châtillon, a little town just south of Paris where he had lived for most of his life, four days before his 87th birthday.

Though having dabbled in many genres, he is most famous for Nestor Burma, the anti-hero of Les Nouveaux Mystères de Paris. Burma, a cynical private detective, is an astute speaker of argot (French slang), an ex-Anarchist, a serial monogamist and an inveterate pipe smoker. Of the 33 novels detailing his adventures, eighteen take place in a sole arrondissement of Paris, in a sub-series of his exploits which Malet dubbed the "New Mysteries of Paris" quoting Eugene Sue's seminal "feuilleton"; though he never completed the full 20 arrondissements as he originally planned. Apart from the novels, five short stories were also published, bringing the total of Burma's adventures to 38.

The comic artist Jacques Tardi adapted some of his books much to the author's approval claiming that he was the sole person to have visually understood his books; Tardi also provided cover illustrations for the Fleuve Noir editions of the novels, released from the 1980s onward.

Reviews

[Orinoco Womble (tidy bag and all) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Any similarity with the eponymous episode of the Guy Marchand TV series is darn near impossible to find. Well, yes, there is a wine merchant involved, and he does have a stepdaughter. Apart from that, we're on our own here.

Burma finds himself secretary-less as Helene has twisted her ankle running for a train back to Paris from her Côte D'Azur holiday, so she'll be laid up for an extra week. (Yeah. Right. Not even Nestor swallows that one.) Bored and angry at being stood up in the station, he follows a pair of nice feminine legs to a carnival, where someone tries to throw him off one of the rides. No dice, of course--like Marlowe and Rockford and so many others, our man Burma is indestructible. But who's trying to off him, and why?

If French isn't your native language (and even if it is), the 1950s-and-earlier argot may be confusing. If so let me direct you to http://www.languefrancaise.net/Bob/In...
"Bob" is your online guide to older French slang.

The only real drawback to this light-as-air noir novelette is that the final 20 pages are tell-not-show. I kid you not. Malet usually does better at resolving his puzzles, but he must have got bored...or so confused he had to write it all out, clear.

[Sandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dopo “Il boulevard delle ossa” le indagini di Nestor Burma riescono sempre a mettermi di buon umore, adoro l’investigatore vecchio stile, dalla battuta pronta, che, per una volta, non emana il solito fascino da uomo misterioso ma conquista per la sua ironia. In un certo senso Burma è un burlone, ma quando si tratta del suo lavoro riesce a centrare il bersaglio, pur concedendosi qualche scivolone. Non è un detective perfetto, ma sono le sue imperfezioni, il modo in cui affronta il mondo a renderlo uno dei miei detective preferiti.

[Matteo Bordoni · Rating 4 out of 5]

E anche questo Malet mi ha rapito. Tutto si incastra alla perfezione, nulla appare forzato, sospeso a fili traballanti. Mi piace la scrittura, mi piace come la storia fluisca senza intoppi (per il lettore naturalmente, perché per il povero Nestor Burma le acque non sono mai calme…), come gli indizi vengano proposti in modo intelligente, al momento giusto. Burma poi, con quel suo modo di essere da un lato tombeur de femme e dall’altro duro dal cuore tenero, mi suscita una certa empatia

[Seth Lynch · Rating 4 out of 5]

Léo Malet is one of my favourite crime writers. He happens to have been a combination of things I admire: a member of the Surrealist group in the 1930′s and the instigator of French Noir crime fiction. Before Nestor Burma – Leo Mallets detective French crime tended to be imitations of American Hardboiled crime. Knock-off Chandlers and Hammetts. Through the early part of World War Two, this was how Mallet made his money – it was also the cause of his split with The Surrealists. Then Malet stopped writing novels set in American cities which he’d never visited and wrote one set in the city he’d live in for most of his adult lie, Paris. The rest is French Noir, Hardboiled, Crime-Fiction History.

My French is not good enough to read the original versions (except any lines where Burma says: I’d like a coffee please, or can you direct me to the train station, I have a train to catch.The problem is that Burma knows Paris inside out and so doesn’t need directions. He doesn’t drink much coffee either, preferring something stronger. So for me, for now, this is good-bye to Nestor Burma. I’ve read all the books which have been translated into English, and look longingly at the forty or so which haven’t.

This story opens with Burma waiting for his secretary at the train station. She’s been down in the South. He then finds himself at the fairground where somebody jumps him and tries to throw him out of a scenic railway. I’m not certain what a scenic railway is but it goes up high and if you fall out of the carriage you can be crippled or die. Each of those things happened to the two people who fell out of this carriage (on separate occasions). One of them had been thrown out after a struggle with Burma. There are a few femme fatales, some no-good delinquents (I think that’s the suitable mid-1950s turn for them.) Then there are the twists and turns as Burma puts the case together (see, I’m trying not to let you know the butler did it).

The ending itself is a little sour. Being the last book I’ll be able to read of Mallet’s for a while I like that. I don’t part easily from this series. If anybody were to start translating them they have a ready market in me.

[Paola · Rating 4 out of 5]

Appassionante, ironico ed imprevedibile Nestor Burma è un investigatore che non smette di sorprenderti.