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May 09, 2007
Pulp Review: Fantomas
Ahhh, Fantomas! Now this is an interesting change of pace from the other pulps I've been imbibing. First of all it's French, and slightly older, having been published in 1911. Written by Pierre Souvestre and Marcel Allain, it became the first in a long series of Fantomas stories that thrilled French readers and captured the imagination of the Avant-Garde. There's a great site here, The Fantomas-Lives.com site, that gives a good overview of both the books and the phenomenon.
The story itself moves back and forth between the countryside and Paris, starting with a scene that makes you think it will be a sort of Agatha Christie style locked-room murder mystery but the runs off in all sorts of interesting and sometimes bizarre directions. Fantomas is already a known threat to the Paris elite - a mystery figure who robs and sometimes even kills the wealthy. His motives remain unclear, but everyone's talking about them. After our first murder in the country estate of a wealthy noblewoman, the scene moves to Paris where Fantomas perpetrates a bold and down right creepy robbery of a Russian heiress while she's in her bath. All these crimes bring the super-intelligent and committed policeman Juve onto the case, who has developed his own fixation on Fantomas.
The criminal and the cop both share an amazing talent which plays a role time and again in this story. As is the case in so many pulps, they're both masters of disguise. Chapter after chapter we meet new characters who turn out to be someone else in disguise. The book keeps you off your toes at all times. Is that Juve? Is it Fantomas? What's going on here? Who's killing whom? The story does drag at times, and a couple plot threads are left to the reader to tie up on our own (thankfully we're given enough information to make logical conclusions). The ending was great. Maybe slightly contrived sure, but also very creepy and definitely thrilling.
Only this first book and one of the sequels are still in print in English, although I've found a couple of older editions of two others online and ordered those. There are others still, but they must be quite rare as they go for $200 or more. I like me some Fantomas for sure, but not that much. There's plenty of other pulp in the pile. There was also a movie serial made of Fantomas in 1911 that I'm trying to get a copy of, but I don't think there's a US region release of the DVD. Anyone no where to get a good region free DVD player?
Next time I'll tell you tales of America's Secret Service Ace, OPERATOR #5!
Posted by rdakan at May 9, 2007 01:11 PM