The Wicked Go to Hell

by Frédéric Dard, David Coward (Translation)

An undercover cop and a prison inmate play a tense game of cat and mouse in this brilliantly original thriller by the master of French noir
 
At one of France’s toughest prisons, an undercover cop is attempting to trap an enemy spy by posing as a fellow inmate. So Frank and Hal find themselves holed up together in a grimy, rat-infested cell, each warily eyeing the other. As they plan a daring escape, an unexpected friendship ensues—but which is the cop and which is the spy?
 
Gritty and hard-hitting, The Wicked Go to Hell is a tense, paranoid 1950s thriller about duty and conscience, deception and loyalty, and about what it means to be human—whether you’re the good guy or not.

Genres: Crime, Noir, Fiction, France, Mystery, Thriller, Novels

156 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1956

About the author

Frédéric Dard (né Frédéric Charles Antoine Dard le 29 juin 1921 à Jallieu (Isère), France - 6 juin 2000 à Bonnefontaine, Fribourg, Suisse) était un écrivain principalement connu – dans une production extrêmement abondante – pour les aventures du commissaire San-Antonio, souvent aidé de son adjoint Bérurier, dont il a écrit cent soixante-quinze aventures depuis 1949. Parallèlement aux "San-Antonio" (l'un des plus gros succès de l'édition française d'après-guerre), Frédéric Dard a produit sous son nom ou sous de nombreux pseudonymes des romans noirs, des ouvrages de suspense psychologique, des « grands romans » des nouvelles, ainsi qu'une multitude d'articles. Débordant d'activité, il fut également auteur dramatique, scénariste et dialoguiste de films. Selon ses dernières volontés, Frédéric Dard a été enterré dans le cimetière de Saint-Chef, en Isère, village où il avait passé une partie de son enfance et où il aimait se ressourcer. Un musée y est en partie consacré à son œuvre.

Reviews

[Glenn Russell]

The Wicked Go To Hell - Frédéric Dard's short novel published in 1956 captures the dark, paranoid uneasiness France experienced during the years of the Cold War.

On the opening pages, a police officer by the name of Mèrins relates how the chief of the French Secret Service calls him into his office and lays it out: they've caught a spy trying to steal top secret information, a first step for a terrorist attack. He won't talk; he won't tell us who he's working for or the details of his organization no matter how much we torture him (Mèrins can hear the blows and screams coming from the next room). Therefore, the old chief continues, we take the next step: we send him to prison and put you in the same cell. Become pals and escape together – he'll surely lead you to the head of his gang of terrorists. Once we know who's in charge, we can destroy them all.

The narrative immediately switches from first-person to third and we witness Frank and Hal, both badly beaten up, placed in the same cell with a mute runt who murdered his wife. And here's the game Dard sets out: Hal and Frank; Frank and Hal - as readers, we don't know who is the cop and who is the spy.

Hal and Frank snarl at one another as their suspicion and loathing (both accuse the other of being a cop) boil over into violence. The fat sadistic chief warder called Bull warns them another round of fighting and they both spend a week of solitary downstairs in total darkness with loads of giant rats.

But Frank and Hal's intense hatred and resentment of each other prove too extreme - they do fight again – and off they go to solitary. They find out the hard way the Bull wasn't exaggerating about those gnawing giant rats. Back in their cell, after an excruciating week each shut up alone in their respective black as midnight tomb-like dungeon, they're about ready to call a truce.

Then it happens: there's big news: a guillotining in the jail's courtyard for the prisoner who killed a cop, scheduled during the town's annual festival. Now's the time – Hal outlines his plan of escape. The pair share an uneasy partnership. The fateful day arrives and it's action and more action making for an exciting pager-turner. Frank and Hal eventually take refuge on a small deserted island.

Surviving on the island for a time, one of the pair muses, "There are times when whether a man's a cop or a crook means nothing, times when it ceases to matter which side of the fence he's on. There aren't any fences any more! We're just a couple of guys! Two poor saps adrift in the lowest depths of hell!"

They develop a friendship of a kind. But, but, but...after some days a third person washes up on the island – Dora, an attractive young blonde who claims to have lost her husband when their sailboat capsized. Nothing like a luscious beautiful dame to add drama to their plight.

In his review of the novel for The Spectator, Jeff Noon wrote: "It’s a game of cat and mouse where cat and mouse are both wearing masks: claustrophobic, paranoid in the extreme, and very entertaining. A tough-guy version of Kafka."

Permit me to offer a recommendation: once finished the novel, go back to the first page where Mèrins states: "I must admit something: we do actually have a conscience. But it is so deeply buried under our DUTY that we are practically unable to hear its voice when, as happens with everyone's conscience, it starts to protest. It's better that way, believe me.” Mèrins' reflections here follow his time in prison and on the island. Knowing what tribulations Mèrins has had to endure gives expanded meaning and depth to his words.


French crime novelist Frédéric Dard, 1921-2000

[Robin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Meet Hal and Frank. They are cell mates in a French prison, and distrust each other violently. We learn in the prologue that one of them is an undercover police officer sent to initiate a prison break with the other, a spy, to gain his trust and infiltrate the spy ring.

This is another clever, sexy French noir story, originally written in the 1950's by Frederic Dard (I also enjoyed his Bird in a Cage). It is suspenseful and stylish, gritty and bleak. Who is the cop, who is the spy? And are these labels the sole moral determinants of these men?

Dard is incredibly prolific; he wrote around 300 thrillers in his time (this number is in dispute because he wrote under several pen names as well). He is worth checking out.

I received a free ARC of this book from Edelweiss, in exchange for an honest review. Thank you, Pushkin Vertigo!

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Wicked Go to Hell

Dard wrote some 284 French thrillers under 17 different pseudonyms, sort of the French answer to Harry Whittington, the American King of the Paperbacks. The Wicked Go to Hell is one of Dard’s most well known novels, mainly because it became a noir cinematic thriller of the same name.

The Wicked Go to Hell is the ultimate buddy movie about two men connected by fate and locked in together -literally. The fun literary game Dard plays is leaving the reader to guess which is the criminal and which the undercover officer trying to wile a confession out of the other one. The officer wasn’t given much choice in the matter and left for the most part to fend for himself in prison and even after they escape. One of the strange oddities of the story is just how far he carries the deception and to what lengths he would go to see it to conclusion. The two men fight like brothers from day one and never seem to trust one another although stuck together like with glue.

[Andy Weston · Rating 5 out of 5]

The French do 'noir' as well as anyone, and though Dard is new to me, he joins those other tremendous authors, Pascal Garnier, Georges Simenon and Jean-Patrick Manchette.

The notes at the back of the book say that he was very influenced by Simenon. The similar deadpan language and simpleness leads me to think Garnier was influenced by Him. The action and violence is very Manchette.

The story is of two escaped prisoners, Frank and Hal, both serving time for murder. They have a violent, love hate relationship, and though good friends neither believes each other when they relate what they are in prison for. Much if the action takes place with them on the run. It's a one or two session read with a small cast of just three, and each of the characters wonderfully observed.

it could have been a lot better if the prologue was skipped. The prologue sets the scene, tells of the policeman trying to catch his spy, and going undercover. Without that, there would be a twist when the relationship between the two is revealed towards the end of the novella. Just a thought.

[Elizabeth (Alaska) · Rating 3 out of 5]

The opening is an internal dialogue by a policeman. Toward the end of this brief opening is this. Because before telling you any more, I must admit something: we do actually have a conscience. But it is so deeply buried under our DUTY that we are practically unable to hear its voice when, as happens with everyone’s conscience, it starts to protest.

The cop, whose name we don't know, gets an assignment. He must help a prisoner escape from jail so that the authorities can learn who were the other members of his group. In the next scene two men are being ushered into a jail cell. Their names are Frank and Hal. We do not know which is the cop and which is the legitimate prisoner. And this is the reader's dilemma. Which is which?

This is dark. I guess one could assume that from the title which includes two dark words: wicked and hell. I like dark, at least in small doses. I intend to read more of this author. There is a brief biography at the end and I learned Dard was very prolific and that he wrote under numerous pseudonyms, not all of which have been translated into English. I think I'll go on a hunt, though, because he intrigues me. For one thing, I learned that Dard and Simenon were friends. Ok, so back to this book: a very strong 3-stars, but so strong as we can see, that I want more of Dard.

[Sasha]

This looks so awesome! Noir, rec'd by Robin.

[Raven · Rating 5 out of 5]

Being such a confirmed fan of Georges Simenon, I could not believe my utter ignorance of the work of Frederic Dard, whose output in terms of number and quality is widely lauded as the equal of Simenon himself. I thought The Wicked Go To Hell in particular was absolutely outstanding, opening with an unnamed and deniable police officer being instructed to go undercover into gaol to initiate a prison break with a recently confined criminal to infiltrate the organisation the prisoner is affiliated with. Not until the final bloody denouement is the reader in possession of the knowledge as to which character is which when the undercover operation begins, being named merely as Hal and Frank. From the claustrophobic intensity of their initial confinement until their attempted escape and beyond, Dard inveigles us in a bizarre guessing game as to which morally dubious man is which, as each tries to deceive and expose the true identity of the other. From the inherent violence of the institution at the hands of sadistic guards, to their quest for freedom, Dard keeps up this emotionally bleak, and sinister tone, which serves to unsettle the reader consistently throughout. I was quite frankly mesmerised from start to finish, despite the darkness and sense of base evil that the book consistently exhibits, and I loved the aspect of reader participation that Dard so skilfully wove into the tale as we seek to discover the true identity of each man, and the descent into immorality we are all capable of.

[Silvia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Abbastanza delusa da questo breve romanzo "noir" ( no e poi no,non è Simenon), si sente che è nato prima come opera teatrale e cinematografica, sembra una sceneggiatura con dialoghi innaturali al limite della caricatura.

[Marjorie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a little gem of a book that was first published in France back in 1956. The author, Frederic Dard, published over 300 thrillers, suspense stories, plays and screenplays. This book was first written by Dard as a play and then released in a film directed by Robert Hossein in 1955. The book is a novelization of the film and has recently been translated to English with publication in the US.

The story involves two prisoners, Frank and Hal, sharing a cell. One of them is a spy and one of them is a police officer who has been told to help the spy escape prison, thereby earning his trust so he can learn more about the spy ring. The reader has no idea who is the spy and who is the police officer. It’s a short book and kept me guessing and I enjoyed it. Nothing in depth here with not much fleshing out of the characters but rather a simple straightforward suspenseful story that kept my interest.

This book was given to me by the publisher through Edelweiss in return for an honest review.

[H is for Hydraulics · Rating 1 out of 5]

Wicked Go To Hell was disappointing. I think I was expecting more of a psychological thriller than what I got. As I read the book, I made notes of actions the characters made or preferences they had that I thought were clues to help the reader guess which one was the undercover cop, and I was also waiting for a plot twist that never came. None of this really panned out in a way that was particularly interesting to me, unfortunately.

The biggest problem in this book for me (and perhaps this is a translation issue), is that it's focused on two men and the premise is asking first, who is the cop, and second, who is the bad guy? But the voices and personalities of the men are nearly interchangeable throughout the book although one is slightly more violent than the other, so the question was pretty irrelevant.

The ending is also more of a psychological... thing, than fulfilling the premise (exposing the crime ring), which was disappointing to me. I was reminded a lot of Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs, but this book isn't executed nearly as well and doesn't give us a reason to care about either of the men.

[AC · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pure pulp and an awful translation. Also dated as hell. Not very good, tbh

[Sandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

review to come

[Shay · Rating 2 out of 5]

An undercover cop and an enemy spy—but you don’t know which one is which. Great idea in theory, less interesting in this particular execution.

[Aya Brea · Rating 3 out of 5]

Narrativamente geniale, si arena un po' sul finale. Nonostante ciò, il fascino della scrittura di Dard si percepisce nei fondali dove agiscono i suoi personaggi: la baia bianca, una baracca dove rifugiarsi e soffici nuvole rosa. Hal e Frank sbiadiscono sullo sfondo.

[Jiří Pavlovský · Rating 1 out of 5]

Padesátkový noir má sklony k hysterii. A co teprve francouzský padesátkový noir. To už se postavy nonstop svíjejí v záchvatech emocí - což je o to trapnější, že jde o tvrdé kriminálníky. Respektive jednoho tvrdého kriminálníka a jednoho tajného poldu, na něj nasazeného. Jen není jasné, kdo je kdo.
Ten nápad je dobrý - víme, že tajná služba poslala do vězení svého agenta, ale zatímco úvod je vyprávěný v ichformě, po příchodu do vězení přejde román do erformy a čtenář skutečně netuší, kdo je kdo. Oba vězni se navzájem podezřívají a ani jeden o sobě nechce nic říct, takže se větší část románu chovají jako manželé z italského dramatu. Chvíli se mlátí a chvíli usmiřují. Pak se jim podaří utéct, připlete se mezi ně ženská a začne peklo. Gejzíry naivních emocí tryskají tak, že má člověk pocit, že tohle psala Stephanie Meyerová. I když ne, to by pak mělo 600 stran a ne 150.
A přitom ta zápletka je docela zajímavá a autorovi se podařilo i nějaké to překvápko, jenže to naivní chování rozháraných drsoňů to zabíjí.
Mimochodem, autorovi vyšlo pár knih (z těch zhruba 300, co za život napsal) i u nás - třeba komediální kriminálky které napsal pod jménem San Antonio: Galantně v gala i bez a Dovolená jako stehno. Tyhle mě právě zlákaly, abych od něj zkusil i něco jiného... a ten humor mi sednul víc.

[Melisende · Rating 3 out of 5]

"There are times when whether a man's a cop or a crook means nothing, times when it ceases to matter which side of the fence he's on. There aren't any fences anymore! We're just a couple of guys. Two poor saps adrift in the lowest depths of hell!"

Its a simple plot - two men, one a cop, one a crook. We don't know who is who except the cop has been sent to prison to get the crook, an alleged spy, to spill the beans. A prison break - two men on the run; an island; a woman.

The bulk of the story takes place whilst the two men are on the run and whilst they are in hiding. It is a dark, claustrophobic psychological drama filled with paranoia, mistrust, betrayal, petty jealousy, and a desperate need to survive.

The tale was originally written for the stage (1954), so the action is minimal and at times implied, which may not translate to well into the novel adapted two years later.

So just who is who??

[Maria Cristina · Rating 3 out of 5]

La tensione è il terzo protagonista di questo noir. Hal e Frank sono chiusi insieme dentro la cella di una prigione, chi dei due è la spia e chi il poliziotto? Si avvisano a vicenda continuamente di essere il traditore ma tra di loro si crea un legame che li accompagna durante l’evasione e dopo, durante la lotta per la sopravvivenza, fino al suo epilogo…

[Gary Homewood · Rating 4 out of 5]

Violent, delirious, tightly plotted, paranoid prison break noir. A perfect palate cleanser in a reading life. Also, what a brilliant title.

[Richard Derus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Real Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: An undercover cop and a prison inmate play a tense game of cat and mouse in this brilliantly original thriller by the master of French noir

At one of France’s toughest prisons, an undercover cop is attempting to trap an enemy spy by posing as a fellow inmate. So Frank and Hal find themselves holed up together in a grimy, rat-infested cell, each warily eyeing the other. As they plan a daring escape, an unexpected friendship ensues—but which is the cop and which is the spy?

Gritty and hard-hitting, The Wicked Go to Hell is a tense, paranoid 1950s thriller about duty and conscience, deception and loyalty, and about what it means to be human—whether you’re the good guy or not.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Have you finished your Simenon shelf(s)? Are you tired of searching out Pascal Garnier books you haven't read? Pick up the scent of Frédéric Dard, the perpetrator of similar romans durs and noir-themed explorations of the human condition.

In this Jim Thompsonesque tale of convicted murderers who escape incarceration and, while on the run, develop a deeper regard for each other than they have for themselves. It's too short for me to say too much more, but the men are very much of a type that noir readers love to read about: Down on their luck men, violent and angry, who act out their lifelong received abuse all around them. They're very much victims of a system that cares nothing for or about them until they step out of line. Like Genet's homosexual versions, they're perpetrators of crime who see no wrong in getting what they need by any means necessary because absolutely no one anywhere will give it to them.

The twist ending is...foreshadowed a wee bit too strongly in the prologue. Maybe read that after you've finished the book. It won't take you much more than a long, cold Sunday afternoon to read, and it is as perfect a #Deathtober seasonal read as any I've found.

[Dominique Gracia · Rating 3 out of 5]

The strapline for the 1955 film (this story started out as a play, became a film, and only then became a novel) is a stark encapsulation of one thread from the novel: "a woman uses sex to protect herself". To me, this doesn't really describe the novel or its plot, but its 50s sexism acts as a counterintuitive reminder of the importance of the female character in a novel that begins with two men being pitted against each other and follows their relationship through uneasy alliance and back again. The novel could be a textbook example for Sedwick's homosocial triangle.

The plot had an air of melodrama about it, with a prison break, dangerous intruders at a posh house party, and a surprisingly inhabitable desert island. But I struggled somewhat with the absence of stakes for the plot besides each character's desire to survive and resignation to not. I had half expected the cat-and-mouse to end in a more permanent alliance, but the impossibility of that outcome feels like part of the point. The mystery of which is the spy and which is the cop – that is to say, which is the cat and which the mouse – is a successful one.

As I was writing this, I realised that I wanted to rate it more highly than I expected. It is the sort of book that fares better in retrospect than during the reading!

[Thomas Keech · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is only one of 248 thrillers written by Frederic Dard. It’s not his best. I know that, even though I’ve read only two.
As a prisoner is being tortured in an adjacent room, a secret agent is given the task of befriending an inmate to get information from him. Since the secret agent is not identified by name, the reader doesn’t know who is the agent and who is the targeted prisoner. Together they stage a bloody breakout from the prison.
One of the escapees is wounded, gets better, gets worse, gets better, over and over again, complaining about it throughout the whole story. A beautiful young woman becomes stranded with them in a shack on a small island, and they each alternately lust after her and accuse the other of having bad intentions toward her, acting toward her more like insecure ten-year-old boys than the violent killers they both are. There’s violence at the end. One character shoots at another while desperately hoping he’ll miss.
I didn’t get it. The action wasn’t really that exciting, nor were there any believable characters. The gritty depiction of the harsh prison, with its background motif of routine torture, was the most vivid, though repulsive, part of the book.

[Crittermom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good and evil are impossible to distinguish in this engrossing noir thriller translated from the French.  A cop and a spy share a prison cell, but which is which, and what happens when the two escape together.  To what extent does duty supersede conscience, and  what is the nature of loyalty. Is it only labels that separate one man from another? Dard captures the reader with his writing, immediately making them question their expectations.  There is considerable violence, which adds to the moral ambiguity.  

This isn't a novel that is not easy to "like".  The Wicked Go to Hell is powerful, leaving the reader with an almost painful reminder that life exists in shades of grey, rather than comforting black and white.  Is it a well written novel - yes.  Will it linger in memory -yes.  But not every reader will be comfortable with the content or the resolution which is very strongly "noir".  

4/5

I received a copy of The Wicked Go to Hell from Pushkin Vertigo in exchange for an honest review.

--Crittermom 

[Nik Maack · Rating 2 out of 5]

A fairly pointless plot that never plays out, with two characters that are more or less indistinguishable from each other. It moves and is readable, but feels utterly false. I had to wonder if the translation screwed things up somehow.

"He scanned the sea separating them from the mainland. It was rucked with waves and white horses."

What? Horses?

Utterly improbable, completely random, with unearned emotional excess all over the place. There are occasional flourishes that are interesting -- why did that prison guard like to chew in flowers so much? What the hell?

The book is very weird. I feel like maybe the whole thing was a tongue in cheek reference to something I am unfamiliar with. But I doubt it. Instead, it's just a quickly written pulp book that flops along and then ends, unsatisfyingly. Too bad.

[David Mann · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first book by Dard that I have read and it won't be the last. Very entertaining. The premise is a secret agent is assigned to get information from a spy who has been captured and imprisoned. The agent pretends to be a criminal and becomes his cellmate. The two are suspicious of each other (and the reader doesn't know which is which) but plot an escape together. And that's as far as I will go revealing the plot.

I look forward to reading more by this author. Apparently he wrote something like 175 books, so there will be no shortage there. Regarding the French, there is a lot of slang and argot, many words not in the online dictionary. On the other hand I learned a lot of French "bad words" and insults -- definitely useful! As only a few of his books have been translated into English, I'm glad I have learned French so as to explore this author's work more broadly.

[Scott Cumming · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one gets a additional star bump based on how great the prologue is. It is easily the most exciting piece of writing within the book as it sets up the story of a police officer going undercover into prison with an accused, who won't give up his bosses, to then escape and hope that the accused leads them to the higher ups.

The prologue is written vibrantly and makes me want to see what else Dard has to offer as this one didn't turn out as strong as its premise. The mystery of who is the policeman keeps things going and through the various plot points your opinion can change on who it is. The story zips along at a fair pace, but it is never that exciting.

A great title, a great setup, but ultimately not the pay off or journey that satisfies.

[Cattle Class · Rating 3 out of 5]

An excellent premise, well-written but moves a bit too quickly for the intense relationship between the two men to be entirely plausible. The patience of the woman they encounter also beggars belief, but so what? Overall, not a must-read in the Dard canon but the sort of book that you might read on your commute, a book to take you out of yourself and into a paranoid puzzle.

I see now that this began life as a play before being filmed and then novelized. I think that explains some of the issues I mention. I think a play could extend the perceived timeline and provide the more visual clues to the emotions of the characters that would flesh them out a bit more.

[Ala · Rating 2 out of 5]

The title is catchy and the idea is amazing - two men in prison, one of them is an undercover cop, the other is a spy. The reader doesn't know which one is which. Too bad the tension evaporates near the end thanks to a very silly and questionable plot point being introduced.

Apparently this was originally a stage play and it does read like one. The dialogue is very theatrical, in a sense that it's dramatic and doesn't sound like anything a human being would actually say in those situations (the climax being the worst offender). I'm sure some people will like it, but it's very much not for me.

[Stephkay · Rating 3 out of 5]

Definitely a French crime thriller. True to French traditions in fiction, that means lots of conversation and philosophy, and relatively little action. "Relatively" because for French fiction, quite a lot happens! The main aspect of the plot - no longer being sure of which character is the police and which the criminal - is interesting to tease out by matching their words against their actions. Even once there's some reveal at the end, you're left rereading parts you finished, saying to yourself, "he really did that?!"

[A.B. Patterson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very noir and deeply psychological short thriller with moral lines so blurred that good and bad become merged into one cesspit of depravity. Aside from the story itself, what it says about the State's willingness to become more corrupt than the supposed enemies of the State is enduringly relevant. One of the reasons I so love the noir genre is because of its facility to contain biting social commentary. Dard does not disappoint.

[Aina · Rating 2 out of 5]

I liked the mind games and the slow building relationship between the two main characters, but strangely the story felt both detached and melodramatic. The characters' behaviour were more like teenagers than adults and there was a lack of suspense to the proceedings. Perhaps something got lost in translation, but I wasn't as affected as I expected to be.