Brad Spurgeon's Blog

PARIS – Today I have published on my blog the third in a series of never-before-published Q&A interviews that I did in the 1990s in preparation for a big article about the French crime writing scene. This interview, with Patrick Raynal, who was then the editor of the famous Série Noire crime novels of the Gallimard publishing house, is a great look at how the world has both changed and remained the same. Raynal is still alive, and about to publish a new book at Albin Michel this year, and the Série Noire continues as well. But it is interesting to see how much a few things have changed since then, like his comment about how few women writers he received manuscripts from in the mid-1990s. Or the role of the agent in France, which while not having grown to the level of so many Anglo-Saxon countries, has nevertheless developed massively since then. It is also a good look at the American writers the French liked at the time, and still do, in fact.

Follow @BradSpurgeon