Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #178626 in Books
• Published on: 2006-03-31
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

From Publishers Weekly
In the mode reminiscent of Sherlock Holmes and his ineradicable nemesis, the virtually immortal Professor Moriarty, Inspector Juve dedicates himself to the relentless pursuit of that evil genius Fantomas. He is, as they say in petrified Paris, "Nothing. . . Everything. . . Nobody. . . Somebody." And what does he do? He "spreads terror," diabolically, craftily beyond all imagining: slashes throats of kindly old ladies; stuffs strangled British socialites into trunks; boldly robs Russian princesses in their hotel rooms; pushes witnesses off speeding trains to their deaths. Can Juve prevail against that hellish power? Men masquerade as women; suicides return from the dead; ladies wail "What am I to do?" and faint from surprise and shock. Juve finally hunts Fantomas down. But a surprise awaits, leaving the charmed reader of this French bestseller hoping to see more of the weird pair. Ashbery's introduction not seen by PW.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Fantomas prefigures the post-modern fictions of Borges.
For some reason, Fantomas never figures in the genealogy of the detective story, where Borges, with his 1942 story 'Death and the compass'is credited with completely reversing the traditional elements of detective fiction (crime,investigation,solution, resolution), to create a new post-modern genre, 'anti-detective fiction', followed by Nabakov, Pynchon etc,which is characterised by a lack of or a compromised resolution, an unknowable world (Holmes, Poirot etc. always knew the world they operated in), and a hugely fallible detective who is unable to control the plot, and is usually destroyed by his own detection. Fantomas does all this 30 years earlier. In the first book, we don't even know who Fantomas is - there is enough textual evidence to suggest that he is not Etienne Rambert-Gurn, that we can never know who he is. We have only Juve's word for it, and he is constantly admitting that this may be a figment of his imagination. The form itself is also revolutionary - instead of following a single narrative to its resolution, the narrative is continually splintering, with different stories on the go at once. Juve manages to connect them all to Fantomas, but to accept this is to ignore the special contrapuntal magic of the text, which through repitition, doubling, mirroring, achieves a terrifying loss of control on the part of the reader, who is frequently in the dark as to which character is which. Even if Gurn is Fantomas, the ending is hardly the cosy resolution of Agatha Christie, say. An innocent man is executed, and a homicidal lunatic is on the loose. The predominant motif of the novel is of the theatre, acting, inventing a role - the result being a comprehensive deconstruction of any simplistic, holistic notions of identity, and therefore, perhaps, offering a more liberating way of looking at the world, one which does not depend on repressive dichotomies, such as good and evil. This novel, despite being indifferently written, is a masterpiece, which proves the superior power of the unconscious over the conscious artist.

"Fantomas is alive! They have executed the wrong man!"
The English have their Master Detectives. But the French have Fantomas - Master Criminal! Nowhere in English or American crime novels is there a villain as scary, or as omnipotent as Fantomas. If you're ready for crime novels where the bad guy always wins -- get Fantomas!

The adventures of Fantomas and his 'squeeze', Lady Beltham, were a sensation in France during the first part of the 20th Century. Even though they were just dime novels, great poets like Appollinaire (founder of the "Friends of Fantomas Society"),and artists like Magritte and Juan Gris worshipped this Genius of Crime. These novels, (especially the first one), are intoxicating, gruesome, and permeated with the atmosphere of turn-of-the-century Paris.

Readers of English mysteries might find the plots a bit airy at times, but there are moments of sublime surreal transcendance in each one, that simply cannot be found anywhere else.

One episode finds detective Juve, (Fantomas' nemesis), spying through a looking glass into an apartment he suspects has been visited by Fantomas. (This was Forty years before "Rear Window").

Through his looking glass, he is baffled to observe the lady who lives there, apparently recoiling in horror at her middle-class living room furniture, and leaping to her death onto a Parisian boulevard.(Juve through his telescope, could not see the Boa Constrictor which Fantomas had placed in the room.)

Bad guys dressed as gendarmes, good guys posing as criminals. With each new character, one wonders, "Is this Fantomas, or is it Juve"? And "Where is Lady Beltham"? Everyone is a master of disguise. Nothing is certain -- except that the genius of crime, with his sweet, beautiful English Aristocratic Lady will ultimately triumph in the end.