Fantomas (Dover Mystery, Detective, & Other Fiction) [Paperback]

Marcel Allain (Author), Pierre Souvestre (Author), Cranstoun Metcalfe (Translator), Robin Walz (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 31, 2006 | Series: Dover Mystery, Detective, & Other Fiction

A noblewoman is hacked to death, a Russian princess is boldly robbed, a lord's lifeless body is found in a trunk. It is the work of Fantômas, a master of disguise whose diabolical crimes paralyze Parisians with terror. The first volume in a series of wildly popular French thrillers, Fantômas stands as the original pulp fiction.

Editorial Reviews

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. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

[Fantômas is] like going on a roller coaster: you know what to expect but you scream, with fear and pleasure, anyway. . . . They don’t write’em like that anymore. (Michael Dirda)

Fantômas is still scary (The Washington Post Book World) --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Dover Publications (March 31, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0486449718
• ISBN-13: 978-0486449715
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,626,808 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Pinnacle of Pulp Brilliance, August 26, 2006

By 

Ian Fowler (Denver, CO United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Fantomas (Dover Mystery, Detective, & Other Fiction) (Paperback)

Paris is the grip of fear. One name is at the root of this panic: "Fantomas." In a matter of days, a wealthy heiress is hacked to death in her room. A young guest, Charles Rambert stands accused by his own father of the crime, and commits suicide. A Russian princess is robbed in her room. An English lord, a veteran of the Boer War, goes missing. One detective, Juve, knows that Fantomas is the mastermind of so much misery. Can he unmask the criminal in time? Or is this all a figment of Juve's mind?

Pierre Souvestre and Marcel Allain's creation "Fantomas" is the pinnacle of pulp brilliance. He's one of the great literary super-villains, a shadowy crime-lord who "spreads terror" for the absolute pleasure of it. He doesn't want to rule the world. He makes his living from crime, but clearly enjoys the notoriety his crimes bring him. In a sense, Fantomas is a break-point between the fantastic qualities 19th century pulp, and the down-to-earth crime fiction of the mid-20th century.

The first novel is a rip-roaring ride of horror and intrigue, as Fantomas layers scheme upon scheme, murdering and stealing for the pleasure of it. A master of disguise, Fantomas moves through the novel as an ambiguity, appearing as various people, usually people he has murdered, forwarding his loathsome schemes. Juve, also a master of disguise, is obsessed with capturing the fiend. He also moves as a shadow, under the guise of beggars and criminals, investigating each lead that might bring Fantomas to the guillotine.

The novel is episodic, naturally, as it was originally serialized. There is an almost maddeningly number of interconnected plot-lines. Juve and Fantomas play a bloody game of cat and mouse, each hidden under impossible disguises. Fantomas' crimes alternate from being dashing and Robin-Hoodesque to terrifyingly violent and bloody. He murders because he can, willingly slaughtering dozens so as to do away with an assumed identity. While the writing is fairly overwrought, it is also quite lush and lurid, sweeping up the reader and leading them to compulsively read the next exciting episode, as cliffhangers abound and plot-twists litter the landscape.

Naturally, the character development is secondary. Each character is drawn in broad-strokes: the dogged, obsessed Juve; the mysterious, malign Fantomas; the hapless Charles Rambert, and; the pitiable victims who find themselves caught in Fantomas' web. Further, the narrative is not a single linear plot, but rather a tangled web of events, some of which are resolved quickly, others which are never adequately followed to their conclusion. More than anything, the authors were interested in excitement, and they give that to the reader in spades.

"Fantomas" is simply the first in a series of over 30 books. Sadly, the first one has only recently come back into print in English. Hopefully, more of adventures of this lurid, prototypical arch-villain will be available soon.

25 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fantomas prefigures the post-modern fictions of Borges., April 14, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Fantomas (Mass Market Paperback)

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.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fantomas, July 22, 2007

By 

Damian Kelleher (Brisbane, Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Fantomas (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)

Fantômas is everywhere. He is a master killer, a criminal genius, capable of being in multiple places at once. He can pretend to be anyone - even female - or so the story goes. And there are many, many stories of Fantômas. He is the everyman killer.

Or so Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre, partners in writing, would have the reader believe when they created Fantômas, in 1911. A massive success, the two would go on to write thirty-one more Fantômas novels after the first, and when Souvestre died, Allain wrote eleven more. Parisian appetite for stories of Fantômas's dastardly deeds was insatiable, 'a work of popular fiction whose popularity cut across all social and cultural strata', says John Ashbery, who wrote the introduction to the Penguin Classic edition.

Fantômas was the first novel in a series written by the Allain and Souvestre. It catapulted the genius criminal to stratospheric popularity, as well as all but creating the modern criminal novel. The plot revolves around the mysterious killer, of whom very little is known at the beginning - and, delightfully, even less is known at the end. Indeed, the antagonist throughout the novel may not even be Fantômas, one of the many strokes of genius in this novel.

Charles Rambert waits anxiously to meet his father, who he has not seen in many years. The evening before his father's arrival, Charles learns the story of Fantômas, a master criminal who may or may not exist, who may or may no longer be active as a killer. Excited by these stories, he sleeps poorly, and in the morning, after he has collected his father from the train station, it is revealed that the Marquise de Langruen has been brutally murdered. 'Mme. de Langrune's throat was almost entirely severed by the blade of some sharp instrument. The breadth and depth of the wound absolutely prove that it was not made with one stroke; the murderer must have gone amok and dealt several blows'. Suspicion is placed on the only logical shoulders - Charles.

Princess Sonia, 'not pretty but lovely', is bathing in a hotel room, alone. Suddenly a man grips her arm, covers her mouth with his hand. A conversation, witty, calm, urbane, intelligent, menacing, ensues. Sonia is robbed, the thief escapes. Later, Lord Beltham, missing and presumed dead, is found in the abandoned home of Gurn, a mysterious traveler not often seen at his home. More suspicion is piled on Charles' absent shoulders until he, too, is found murdered in a river, fished out of the water by a vagabond.

The man working on all of these cases is Juve, a single-minded, bloody-minded detective who has hunted Fantômas for years. 'There was not a single person who had not heard of Juve and his marvelous exploits, or who did not regard him as a kind of hero.' We do not learn much of Juve's personal life because we do not need to - it is sufficient to the novel that he is a man obsessed, driven to capture the most elusive of all prey.

The story is told at a number of locations around Paris. Often, we know less about what is happening than Juve, who seems always to be one step ahead of the reader, the other characters - but never Fantômas. A scene will develop with the slightest of links to the main arching story, but then a sudden twist and we are back firmly within the realm of Juve and Fantômas as they struggle to outwith the other. Allain and Souvestre manage to keep a tight rein on the plot in this manner, always curling the story back to its central conceit.

For a novel that deals with a shadowy murderer who may or may not exist, the ending is brilliant. We are left with a clear, defined killer and a clear, defined victory for Juve - but was the captured murderer really Fantômas? The final twist is shocking, touching and very sad. Tension mounts until it is almost unbearable, with the final pages allowing a number of further adventures - forty-two more, in fact.

Fantômas was written to a deadline, following a careful sequence decided beforehand by the two authors. It is important to remember that they went on to write nine more novels that year. That Fantômas is of such high quality is remarkable. I cannot personally vouch for the remaining forty odd novels, but the series certainly began on a high note. For fans of the crime/thriller genre, this novel is recommended to see where it all began. For fans of fine literature, this novel is recommended as an important novel in the progression from gothic to contemporary popular literature. Recommended for all, in other words.