Brad Spurgeon's Blog

A world of music, auto racing, travel, literature, chess, wining, dining and other crazy thoughts….

A Visit to the Past with Patrick Raynal as then Editor of the Série Noire

January 3, 2021
bradspurgeon

La Série Noire

La Série Noire

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.

A Bit More Crime Writing… Ancient Interview With Jean-Bernard Pouy

July 16, 2013
bradspurgeon

Jean-Bernard Pouy

Jean-Bernard Pouy

PARIS – If I performed an interview in 1996 that I have just re-read and found fabulous and fascinating and super-cool, then I cannot be blamed for being boastful if I say that it is fabulous and fascinating and super-cool. After all, I wrote it in 1996 – which is to say, 17 years ago – and therefore, any such reaction and announcement CANNOT be considered boasting. Before I turn full-circle again on such a pronouncement, I think I just want to say that the interview in question was the one I did with Jean-Bernard Pouy, a French crime writer, as I researched my story for The Armchair Detective on French crime writing.

So as part of my blog articles as opposed to posts section, I have decided that the next installment is the Ancient Interview with Jean-Bernard Pouy, following the Ancient Interview With Maurice G. Dantec. In fact, Pouy is not just a crime writer – today he is still around, at 67 – but he was also a key element of the new wave of French crime writers in the early to mid-1990s as he helped spawn the careers of both Dantec, and another of the major writers, Tonino Benacquista, both of whom were former high school students of Pouy’s in a Paris suburb….

If you want to make any sense of that, read the old ancient interview with Pouy….

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