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Fantomas

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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.

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.

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.

I'm always on the lookout for a good read, and I especially love authors of the early decades of the 20th century - Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, C. L. Moore, H. P. Lovecraft, and so on. Pulp literature is always a treat: breackneck pacing, action, adventure, and suspense. Thus, when this little gem popped up as a suggestion for me, I decided to take a chance.

I wasn't disappointed.

Fantomas is a tale of a master criminal in turn-of-the-century Paris and the intrepid detective, Juve, who is obsessed with his capture. Fantomas - a master of disguise, a man without scruple, who may not, in fact, exist at all. When a series of sensational crimes strike the creme of Paris society - everything from simple jewel thievery to murder - Juve suspects the enigmatical, ghostlike Fantomas. The book weaves a breathless tangle of heinous crime, brilliant deduction, wrongful accusation, tragedy, hope, and, indeed, mighty suspense. The final two chapters will literally have you on the edge of your seat - and the ending is a classic.

The Good: Fantomas is a quick and engaging read. Inspector Juve owes much to Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes both in demeanor and virtuosity, but the authors succeed in putting their own spin on him. Allain and Souvestre also, like Alexandre Dumas before them, do not shy away from some biting social satire: good portions of this book exhibit sendups of good Parisian society of the day, and at times can be quite entertaining. The enigma that is Fantomas - early on in the book a simple "phantom" of the imagination, it seems - by the end of the book becomes a hideous presence that overshadows the work and gives the reader a very palpable feeling of dread. The Fantomas concept is, essentially, equal parts Dr. Moriarity and Keyser Soze from The Usual Suspects.

The Bad: Not much really. The book is not without its purple, florid passages, but this simply marks it as a product of its time.

Highly recommended for lovers of pulp literature.

The fascinating pulp novel "Fantomas" (first in a very long series) is perverse, gripping, thrilling, funny, and just plain mean. The final scene of this novel is shocking and unforgettable.

Often praised by horror fans, and I can understand that, as there's much that's horrific here. The typical villain/hero dynamic is broadened and transmorgrified to be something almost beyond sense -- characters shift, disguise themselves, seemingly change their very nature. It should absolutely fail, it should make no sense whatsoever, but the wonder and the beauty of FANTOMAS, a pulp novel written serially, is that it suggests a terrifying sort of sense by its close, it hints and implies a horrible truth that we dare not utter.

Yes, a scholarly edition of this would've been nice, but unlike some popular French novels of this period (I'm thinking of THE MYSTERY OF THE YELLOW ROOM, in particular) it's pretty approachable.

Who is Fantomas? The Lord of Terror, Emperor of Crime, Genius of Evil. That is to say, a middle-aged businessman, a masked black-tie and tuxedo burglar, an English footsoldier from the Boer wars. In this, the first of 32 sensational crime novels, Fantomas decapitates a marquise, stuffs the corpse of an English lord into a trunk and has an affair with his wife, fleeces a Russian princess, drowns all the passengers on an oceanliner to get rid of an alias, and throws the butler from a speeding train. And he gets away with it all, despite relentless pursuit by the righteous, obsessive, and paranoid Inspector Juve. Unfortunately for you, late 20th-century English reader, Morrow/Ballantine only reissued two novels, both out of print. Curses! I tell you, Fantomas is alive! "His boundless shadow extends / Over Paris and all coasts / What then is this gray-eyed ghost / Whose silence surges within? / Might it be you, Fantomas / Lurking upon the rooftops?" --Robert Desnos, "La Complainte de Fantomas"

The English have their Master Detectives. But the French have Fantomas - Master Criminal! Nowhere in English or American crime novels is there a villain as scary, or as omnipotent as Fantomas. If you're ready for crime novels where the bad guy always wins -- get Fantomas!

The adventures of Fantomas and his 'squeeze', Lady Beltham, were a sensation in France during the first part of the 20th Century. Even though they were just dime novels, great poets like Appollinaire (founder of the "Friends of Fantomas Society"),and artists like Magritte and Juan Gris worshipped this Genius of Crime. These novels, (especially the first one), are intoxicating, gruesome, and permeated with the atmosphere of turn-of-the-century Paris.

Readers of English mysteries might find the plots a bit airy at times, but there are moments of sublime surreal transcendance in each one, that simply cannot be found anywhere else.

One episode finds detective Juve, (Fantomas' nemesis), spying through a looking glass into an apartment he suspects has been visited by Fantomas. (This was Forty years before "Rear Window").

Through his looking glass, he is baffled to observe the lady who lives there, apparently recoiling in horror at her middle-class living room furniture, and leaping to her death onto a Parisian boulevard.(Juve through his telescope, could not see the Boa Constrictor which Fantomas had placed in the room.)

Bad guys dressed as gendarmes, good guys posing as criminals. With each new character, one wonders, "Is this Fantomas, or is it Juve"? And "Where is Lady Beltham"? Everyone is a master of disguise. Nothing is certain -- except that the genius of crime, with his sweet, beautiful English Aristocratic Lady will ultimately triumph in the end.

The Parisian obsession with the myth of the superhuman anonymous criminal figure has a long history, going back to Eugène Sue's LES MYSTÈRES DES PARIS, Ponson du Terrail's Rocambole, Leroux's PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, and Louis Feuillade's LES VAMPIRES. One of its most exciting and deathless iterations was as Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre's Fantomas, who appeared in dozens of novel installments starting in 1911 and then an entire silent film serial helmed by Feuillade, and was the toast of the French surrealists. This Penguin edition is a reprint of the first novel in the series, which introduces us to most of the key characters (the supervillain Fantomas, his mistress Lady Beltham, and his nemeses Inspector Juve and ace reporter Jerome Fandor. The novel is almost insanely exciting, with marquises being slaughtered, English lords strangled and their corpses stuffed in trunks, and Russian princesses robbed while taking their baths: at the end of the novel, we find confirmation that (as we had guessed) these are all due to the machinations of Fantomas, who is both everywhere and nowhere, who can anticipate every eventuality and whose crimes are almost fussy in their impossible natures. Not only does Fantomas disguise his identity multiple times in this novel but so do Juve and Fandor: young men become old men, men become women, tramps become police inspectors... nothing is as it seems, right to the very end. It's pure pulp but it's also great fun. This edition is unfortunately free of annotation (which would have been extremely helpful), and the twenty year-old introduction by John Ashbery speaks more to the entire series as a whole than to this particular novel within it.

this novel is so much better than any Lupin's story Leblanc came up with. it's dark, it's mysterious, it's evil, it's irrational, and yet it makes a lot of sense.
the reader, i beg to disagree from a previous reader, can actually follow the development of the story and anticipate its narrative solutions. -
finally: umberto eco and fellow semiotician sebeok, few years ago, wrote/edited a book on the sign of three--Dupin, Holmes and Peirce. they argue that Dupin and Holmes were not using deductions in their investigations, but were using instead what C.S. Peirce called abductions. The notion of 'abduction' is used twice (pp.60-61) in Fantomas.