SPECIAL REPORT
LE POULPE
Gabriel Lecouvreur is an occasional investigator. HB and Noir plots are his daily grind. He is also known as: LE POULPE.
He operates mainly in France, but the rest of Europe can be part of the background. He is libertarian in spirit and intentions. Organized crime, killers, corrupt officials and devious politicians must be prepared to see him popping one day into their fishy businesses.
Then, it's no more "poulpe fiction"... it becomes their hard reality...
A COLLECTIVE AND AMAZING WRITING PERFORMANCE...
Jean-Bernard Pouy, well known French author, had a brilliant idea during a discussion with two of his colleagues: Why not create a central character that could be used in multiple episodes of a mystery series, preferably of the Hard-Boiled and Noir genres, all written by different authors...?
With the help of a small French publishing house, Edition Baleine, Pouy prepared the first volume of what will become a long saga : LE POULPE.
This name, which means "octopus" in French, evokes omnipresence because of his many tentacles , and persistent grip if he catches his prey- everything needed to invoke Gabriel Lecouvreur in his adventures in crime and mystery.
Serge Quadruppani and Patrick Raynal who both helped Pouy in the effort of finalizing the idea, produced novels nb 2 and 3.
This was in 1995, the beginning of a long series of volumes that now totals close to 100 titles!
ALL BY DIFFERENT AUTHORS...
They come from every part of the creative world. Confirmed mystery writers such as Didier Daeninckx, G.J.Arnaud, Pascale Fonteneau. Journalists and essayists. First-time novelists... Men and women. Most are French, but there are Belgian and Swiss authors as well.
Covers of the first three novels of the POULPE series
ALL WITH GABRIEL a.k.a. LE POULPE...
Well, almost all! In fact, there are now a few episodes featuring Cheryl, Gabriel's girlfriend, as the leading character. The first one was by Pascale Fonteneau, a woman-writer who has lived in Belgium since her childhood. The following books having Cheryl as the central character are all written by women. Feminist touch... or parody of the wild American tendency to privilege women-writers and woman characters in the current mystery writing scene? Who knows?...
There are only few guidelines to keep the series rolling and to maintain consistency amongst the different writers. Besides Gabriel, who is the central hero, and his liberal profile- plus his continuous mania to restore an old Russian plane, his favorite "bistro" with his pals, his love for beers of all origins, and his girlfriend Cheryl- there is also the rule of choosing a title bearing an outrageous play on words in French. In fact, the character's name -Le Poulpe- itself is a pun reflecting the series' ties with pulp literature). Until now, only one exception concerning the title rule was accepted, for 'Lundi c'est Sodomie' by Roger Goupil. All other variations in plots and characters are allowed. Even variations in the media: Two volumes are comic books!
To keep a certain unity for the series, covers illustrations are all executed by the same artist: Myles Hyman. And they are mostly superb.
Covers of two Cheryl novels, and one title without play of words
IT BECAME A FRENCH PUBLISHING PHENOMENON !
J-B Pouy wanted to re-establish the contact between the general public and the HB/Noir genre, as it was once the case in France in the end of forties until the end of the sixties.
Pouy, and other French authors, feared that the recent intellectualization of the HB/Noir readership, not only in France, could cut this literature from its natural *popular* public.
In fact very popular mystery series, as 'Série Noire' from Gallimard, were always aiming to that public at their beginning and during their peak periods.
Some "arrangements" were found in the way to handle translations, or shortening of the texts in these early days.
Good or bad, the results of these methods were proven by the high volume of printing at the time.
The play on words in Le Poulpe's titles, is also a reminiscence of these days when the now cult series 'Série Noire' used titles such as 'Imbroglio Negro' for an original novel by Chester Himes, or "Tirez sur le Pianiste" (Shoot the Piano Player)for the French translation of 'Down There' by David Goodis (published in 1956 by Gold Medal in the USA); and also used slang expressions for most of the other titles in the series.
With an approach equivalent to pulp fiction in the USA and to "feuilletons" from an earlier French popular literature, LE POULPE was designed to reach a larger portion of the general public. This was not a marketing goal, but a kind of declaration of principle from Pouy and the first authors who launched the idea and the series.
We may say they succeeded, as proven by the 100 novels produced by many different authors since 1995. The reading public followed, and "POULPE FICTION" became a real French publishing phenomenon.
CYBERPOULPE : LE POULPE ON-LINE...
There is a Web site devoted entirely to LE POULPE- the novels, the authors, the characters and general information. Very well organized by le Comité Poulpien. All in French.
Their exhaustive approach allowed us to complete our 'Special Report'
Book covers on our page: copyright Edition Baleine, France
E.Borgers
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Copyright © 1998 E.Borgers, for texts and setup.
See front page of WEBORGERS - Hard-Boiled Mysteries for complete disclaimer.
Most recent revision: 8 June 1998
Thanks to Duane Spurlock for his help in proofreading our text.