The hidden and the visible in Sous les vents de Neptune

8 pages

English

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The hidden and the visible in Sous les vents de Neptune

iqejilax - Susan Carol Neale

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8 pages

English

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The hidden and the visible in Sous les vents de Neptune

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Publié par	iqejilax
Nombre de lectures	75
Langue	English

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Contemporary French crime fiction – a search for the hidden

with particular reference to

Sous les vents de Neptune

by Fred Vargas

Sue Neale

In this article, I would like to consider the hidden and visible in contemporary crime

fiction, and to look more closely at the work of Fred Vargas and how she plays with the hidden

and the visible in her latest novel,

Sous les vents de Neptune.

Before discussing her work in more

detail, I will give an overview of the genre as everyone may not be familiar with it. After this, I

will consider how French crime fiction differs from the dominant American and British

variants. I can then elaborate what Vargas does in her novels (that she labels as

rompols

, a

variation on the general French term,

romans policiers

) and how she uses the hidden and visible

to create what Sara Poole calls ‘mini proto-mythes’.

Before going further I should point out that labelling the genre is generally regarded as

problematic with critics, often unable to agree on any one term. I shall here be using the

accepted English global term ‘crime fiction’ to refer to it. This term is widely used by

important critics writing in English, such as Stephen Knight, Julian Symons and T J Binyon.

However, in France, although writers and critics acknowledge the influences of both American

and British crime fiction writing, there is no precise equivalent and a plethora of different

labels exist for various subgenres. This may in part reflect the fact that publishing in France

tends to group certain types of crime fiction narrative under certain imprints – presumably to

aid readers to find similar narratives. Thus a knowledgeable reader would expect a novel

published in the Série Noire imprint to be more violent, feature more gratuitous sex and be

more likely to have a male author. It may also reflect the amazing diversity of contemporary

crime fiction writing.

One of the most significant elements of crime fiction that anyone unfamiliar with it

needs to be aware of is that it is a game that the author engages in with the reader; all crime

writers are aware that they have to involve the reader in the game from the outset. Added to

this, there is a tacit understanding between writers and readers regarding their joint awareness

of the accepted generic rules or codes as well as past generic variations and experiments. Thus

an aficionado will understand that if a Chinese character is the criminal, the writer is effectively

poking fun at a rule invented in the twenties that forbids this. So before you begin the game,

you have to be armed with knowledge and understanding to be able to appreciate the subtleties

of writing and to interpret the invisible or hidden meanings in the texts. The other important

element of crime fiction is that it is a quest to uncover the hidden, whether that is a mystery,

the identity of a criminal, or to unveil the truth about an individual himself.

Sara Poole, ‘

Rompols

not of the Bailey: Fred Vargas and the

polar

mini-proto-mythe

’.

FCS xii (2001) 95 – 108.

T J Binyon,

Murder will out

The detective in Fiction.

(Oxford and New York: OUP, 1990); Steven

Knight,

Form

and Ideology in Crime Fiction

(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980) and

Crime Fiction, 1800 – 2000

Detection, Death, Diversity (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004); Julian Symons,

Bloody Murder

(London: Pan Macmillan, 1994).

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