Fantômas Marcel Allain 9781475184112 Books
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Fantômas Marcel Allain 9781475184112 Books
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Tags : Fantômas [Marcel Allain] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. This anthology is a thorough introduction to classic literature for those who have not yet experienced these literary masterworks. For those who have known and loved these works in the past,Marcel Allain,Fantômas,CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform,1475184115,Literature & Fiction General,FICTION Classics
Fantômas Marcel Allain 9781475184112 Books Reviews
A really fun crime novel from over 100 years ago. Over the top, but in a good way. I stumbled on this by first seeing the serial films based on the books - also 100 years old (and thus not only black and white but silent). The cover for the book is fantastic - really perfect for the story which features characters that, like the well-dressed thief towering above Paris, are bigger than life. Pitting a brilliant detective, Juve, against an even more brilliant criminal, this is the first in a long series of books. Supposedly, the two authors would meet to come up with the basic story of each book, then would each write alternate chapters, then meet again to write the final chapter bringing everything together. This allowed them to write an average of one book per month(!) for a total of 32 books before one of them died of influenza. The survivor continued to write Fantomas novels for years afterward. It appears that tracking down all volumes translated from the original French would be, at best, a real project. This first volume is the only one I've read. The crimes are violent and both the criminal and the detective engage in extensive use of disguises and role-playing. This far closer to, say, the Mission Impossible and James Bond movies than to realistic crime stories, but as long as one is willing to go along with that concept, it is really a fun read.
My only real problem with the novel, at least with the version I read, is that it appears to have been a scan of the text with OCR software and then no one ever proofread the result. A major character, Gurn, has his name misspelled more than it is spelled correctly. In a single paragraph it is often spelled "Gurn," "Guru," and "Curn." Each misspelling takes you out of the story for an instant. And, as I mentioned, it occurs often. Still, I think it would be unfair to hold that against the book in rating it, so I gave it 4 stars.
By the end of the first book it was never explicitly established whether Fantomas even existed. By the end of the second book Fantomas had finally put in an actual appearance in full black clothing. In the third book his identity was unmasked at the finale although it was clear that this identity was just one of many and he made his escape. In ‘A Nest of Spies’ Fantomas puts in an appearance almost immediately in yet another disguise and is much more active throughout.
The Fantomas series has always featured lots of disguises particularly from Fantomas and Detective Juve but in ‘A Nest of Spies’ authors Marvel Allain and Pierre Souvestre go all out. Fantomas has TWO identities besides his identity as Fantomas. Juve disguises himself as one of Fantomas’ identities and at one point Fantomas presents himself as Juve disguised as one of his own identities. Jerome Fandor disguises himself as another character. A woman in the story disguises herself as a priest and we discover that another woman is actually a character from the first book. In fact the authors have worked hard to tie the series together not just on the main characters but on a lot of periphery characters including ones that haven’t appeared in quite some time. It will be interesting to see if there is an actual reason why these characters lives continue to intersect or if it’s just a big coincidence. I would be disappointed if it’s just coincidence.
The biggest issue I have with the series is the ending payoff. When your series is built around the villain it makes it hard to have a satisfying conclusion when the criminal always escapes. In fact it makes the whole criminal investigation pointless. I guess one can read the series as a larger narrative, a continuing investigation but when Fantomas is trapped at the end of each book and simply gets away I can’t help but be disappointed. Although there are a lot of references to previous books I didn’t feels as if A Nest of Spies advanced the series much. I’m hoping A Royal Prisoner will shed a little more light on the mysterious Fantomas.
It took me awhile to get into this book. The story jumps around from character to character and story arc to story arc with only a couple of threads to bind them all. Each arc revolves around a crime, more often than not a murder and each crime is investigated by the brilliantly logical Detective Juve. The book was originally published in 1911 and I would be surprised if Juve wasn't inspired by Sherlock Holmes. There is a long conversation between Juve and his assistant M. de Presles that seems ripped straight from a Holmes story. On the other hand Juve doesn't have the idiosyncrasies of Holmes with his only quirky aspect being that he tends to see the enigmatic Fantomas behind all the crimes he's investigating.
Fantomas is the title character but through most of the book it's hard to discern whether he is an actual person or a mythological figure that Juve imagines to be lurking behind every crime. As the investigations proceed all the crimes start linking together with evidence from one crime pointing to the next and so on. Mercel Allain amd Pierre Souvestre weave a larger and larger web as the book progresses but the book builds slowly and I was not enthralled in the early goings. It builds to a trial near the end of the book where Juve tries to state his case that one man, in custody, has committed a series of crimes. The reader is privy to information not available to Juve so it appears that his circumstantial evidence can't possibly lead to his assumption and yet perhaps the writers have thrown us for a swerve. I'll admit that I experienced some *gasp* moments during the trial.
There are books that start out big but flame out as the story progresses but this one is quite the opposite. It took me awhile but once I got into it I was totally riveted right up to the last page. In some ways the book reminds me of the reveal at the end The Usual Suspects but it's actually much more open ended. We know that Kevin Spacey was Kaiser Soze but Fantomas remains an enigma throughout. Is he even real? As the last few chapters unfold events from all through the book start to take relevance but lots of questions carry on past the end of the book. Fantomas is a series with over 40 books and at the halfway point I chalked this book up as my first and last but now I'm really interested in reading the follow up.
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