Rider On The Rain

by Sébastien Japrisot, Linda Coverdale (Translator), Harriet Weaver (Translator)

The story of the psychological duel between an American investigator and Mellie, following the murder of a stranger who had also raped her.

Genres: Fiction, Crime, France, Thriller

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1969

About the author

Sébastien Japrisot was a French author, screenwriter and film director, born in Marseille. His pseudonym was an anagram of Jean-Baptiste Rossi, his real name. Japrisot has been nicknamed "the Graham Greene of France".
Famous in the Francophony, he was little known in the English-speaking world, though a number of his novels have been translated into English and have been made into films.
His first novel, Les mal partis was written at the age of 16 and published under his real name (see also author profile of Jean-Baptiste Rossi).

Reviews

[Richard Derus · Rating 3 out of 5]

Real Rating: 3.5* of five, rounded down because sexual violence is revolting to me

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

My Review: CONTENT WARNING FOR SEXUAL VIOLENCE—STIGMATIZING MENTAL ILLNESS

This is a more or less unusual project...it's a novelization of a film script that Author Japrisot wrote for a wildly successful French film. The DNA of the script is still here, in the copious dialogue tags; quite a few stage directions have survived the trip to novella-ization, too. What also shows is the very, very dated sexual politics of the day...far more horrifying than in the older Japrisot novel reviewed below.

Consider that Charles Bronson plays the male lead in the film. That the film was made in 1969, and came out in 1970. I don't think I need to get too deeply into the, um, action.

So with that warning in place, to the plot. Again its film-script DNA is on display. It is taut; it is not in the least bit deep. Its surfaces are glossy and its politics aren't particularly liberal. It has a lovely woman being abused by damned near everyone who spends even a few seconds onscreen. Americans are violent, nasty brutes; Italians are shouty abusive men; French people are supine and ineffectual.

Author Japrisot wasn't any kind of a patriot....

What's on offer here is a deeply angry story of revenge and of the toll an abusive world can extract. It's never going to be easy to read something written over fifty years ago by a bitter, outraged man without coming away from the experience a little less sure that the world's a good place filled with kind people. But in this story, the woman who exacts a condign revenge on that world is allowed a degree of freedom that would've been unthinkable even a decade earlier. Look at Janet Leigh's character in Psycho....

While it isn't an easy read, due to subject matter, it is formally interesting for its far-from-usual direct lifting of script elements in novelizing the work. It has all of Author Japrisot's strengths, the terse and pointed language and the stunningly easy to visualize settings. Because it's not a simple story, in the sense of having great resonance with dark and ugly parts of human psyches, I don't think it'll appeal to all audiences. Because it's novella length, I don't think it'll necessarily fit well into today's crime-fiction universe...the crime trend is towards bloat as much as the rest of literature is. But it's a bracing, bitter draft of revenge fantasy and devictimized womanhood.

Only not in a salubrious way.

[Algernon · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is no one on the street. There does not seem to be anyone on the bus. There is only the rain, falling steadily and heavily, and the movement of massive waves breaking on the shore.

The reader will not find many descriptions of this sort beyond the first page of the present book. Sebastien Japrisot is known for his ‘taut’ style, yet here he manages to outdo even his previous thrillers in term of brevity.
There is of course an explanation for it: this is not a novel first published in 1969. Whoever edited the Goodreads page for the book got it wrong. Japrisot wrote the script for the cult French movie Le pasager de la pluie in 1969. Twenty-three years later, towards the end of his literary career, the same script is published by Editions Denoel with minimal changes, mostly formatting the lines of dialogue and adding short set-up paragraphs and movement cues. It’s like somebody decided to tell you the plot of the movie instead of letting you watch it. I can’t help but wondering if this minimal effort transcription was just an attempt to cash in on the enduring success of the movie version?

At the same time, I can’t deny that Japrisot still has the power to draw me into the story, even after I have seen that movie several times already. I was a poorly supervised kid who managed to gain entry pretty easily to movies labelled 12+, and I came out of the cinema firmly convinced that Charles Bronson was the coolest guy in the industry and that Marlene Jobert was smoking hot as only a French girl could be.
The way these two characters are introduced in the novel is a clear indication for me that the author was himself watching the same movie when he wrote their descriptions and not the other way around [as in actors are chosen based on their book portraits]

She is blonde, pretty, wearing a white turtle-neck sweater. White suits her. She is twenty-five years old. She has a sensible haircut, a sensible face, a sensible life, and doubtless, in her heart, dreams as crazy as everybody else’s, but she has never told them to anyone.
She is Melancolie Mau...

She likes to be called Mellie, but to me she will always evoke that Joe Dassin hit from 1974:

Si tu t'appelles mélancolie
Si l'amour n'est plus qu'une habitude
Ne me raconte pas ta vie
Je la connais, ta solitude

Si tu t'appelles mélancolie
On est fait pour l'oublier ensemble
Les chiens perdus, les incompris
On les connaît, on leur ressemble

I don’t know who the casting director was, but the choices for Mellie and Harry Dobbs still works its magic in the contrast between the luminous, fashion-model thin Jobert in her white clothes and the dark-toned, boulder-shaped Bronson.



He is dark, powerfully built beneath his navy-blue suit, with craggy features, a moustache, and the wary eyes of a big cat.
In spite of herself, Mellie looks for an instant into those eyes, which never leave her.
And then the man smiles at her – openly. A smile both warm and unsettling. If the tiger watching its doomed prey could wear a smile, it would be this one.

I find myself reluctant to write a synopsis of the plot, both because it is probably well known to fans of noir cinema, and because it is built around misdirection, deception and sleigh-of-hand. Even the poster I included above is misleading: Harry Dobbs in not the visitor from the title.
The rain brings a stranger, a killer into the off-season small Riviera resort of Cap-le-Pins [fictional] . He carries a prominent red herring bag in his hands and his name, which will only be revealed in the last chapter, is a clear reference to the master of suspense that inspired Japrisot In a closing homage to Alfred Hitchcock, it is revealed that the rapist's name was Mac Guffin

There is a shocking and disturbing scene in the beginning of the movie. A crime takes place, followed shortly by a just retribution the stranger violently rapes Mellie, who then kills him in self-defence. She later throws the dead body into the sea
The most chilling fact of the tragedy is not the crime itself, but the first reaction of the victim. Mellie blames herself and tries to hide from the horrible memory. It’s why so many aggressors escape justice and it still makes my blood boil, even knowing in advance the story.

She has not prepared her words beforehand, and how does one speak of such a thing?

When Harry Dobbs finally arrives in Cap-les-Pins and begins his game of cat and mouse with Mellie, you cannot help but root for the killer to escape, especially when he begins to exercise his own brand of brutality and psychological pressure in order to make her confess her crime. Book Mellie shows incredible resilience and determination in the novel, eventually winning the respect and even the heart of her tormentor Dobbs.

The romantic angle was the only jarring note in the movie, and I still huff out laughing when Dobbs starts to explain about walnuts and window frames. But at least this is not a Hollywood script and the two leads are not forced into a steamy bedroom scene. The resolution is more honourable than the cheesy love-talk.

Japrisot is worthy of his mentor Hitchcock in the way he manages not only to maintain the suspense , but to surprise his audience with some clever switches in focus, away from Mellie to the suspicious behaviour of her pilot husband, betrayal by her best friend in town, the purpose of the missing red bag, a detour to a high-price Paris bordello and even the identity of the stranger who came to town on a rainy day.

If you are not familiar with the 1970 movie, this book is a very good thriller: concise, dialogue-driven and unpredictable.
If you have seen the movie, the book doesn’t add anything new and Japrisot has several better novels in his catalogue.
Final bit of trivia that I discovered while searching online to confirm the date of first edition for the book:

The 1971 song by The Doors "Riders on the Storm" was reputedly influenced by this film. Jim Morrison allegedly was so taken in by the film and in particular its plot that he wrote the song as a result.

Now that’s something that will definitely be on my mind the next time I play the tune!

[Duncan Beattie (Fiction From Afar) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Over the last year Gallic Books have started reissuing the English translations of the crime novels of author Sébastien Japrisot. Rider On The Rain, titled Le Passager de la pluie and released in 1992 in his native France, being the fourth of these. Japrisot (1931 –2003) whose nom de plume was an anagram of his real name Jean-Baptiste Rossi was highly influential writer and a unorthodox writer who inspired the subsequent generation of French crime writers. His 1977 novel One Deadly Summer (L’Été meurtrier) is Michel Bussi’s favourite noir novel. While Japrisot remains little known in the English-speaking world, all but one of his novels have been made into films.
Japrisot co-wrote a script for the 1970 thriller movie, Rider in the Rain which features Charles Bronson. He later shaped the screenplay into this suspense novel. It is set in a fictitious village close to Toulon on the Cote d’Azur named Le Cap-des-Pins - which incidentally was later used as the name of a French soap opera. Rather than being a murder mystery the reader is aware of the perpetrator from the start and the events that leads to the crime being carried out.

The quiet Riviera resort is usually deserted in the autumn but on one day a strange man steps off the bus. Japrisot sets the scene in detail novel as a bus stops during a rain storm:

“A peal of thunder, a grey river spattering in a downpour, a horizon blurred by autumn. And then the wheels of a bus send up great glistening sprays of water, and the river becomes a road running the length of a desolate peninsula, somewhere between Toulon and Saint-Tropez.”

It isn't long before the stranger sets his eyes on our key protagonist Melancolie or Mellie. Her entrance is described as follows:

“She is blonde, pretty, wearing a white turtle-neck sweater. White suits her. She is twenty-five years old. She has a sensible haircut, a sensible face, a sensible life, and doubtless, in her heart, dreams as crazy as everybody else’s, but she has never told them to anyone”

Mellie is housewife to an Air France navigator. This means she is often left at home alone for long spells as her husband's job takes him to locations such as Djibouti. Unfortunately the stranger observes her vulnerability and submits her to a terrifying ordeal. However when it is over and Mellie awakens, she finds the intruder is still in her house and she takes her revenge before concealing the evidence.

While Mellie is shaken she starts to believe her troubles are over until another stranger appears in the village. The man, Harry Dobbs, is an American and very soon he starts to indicate to Mellie that he knows exactly what she has done. His persistence and determination to extract a confession from Mellie sets up spirited duel between them.
At times Mellie is strong and defiant, other times terrified and often foolhardy as the pendulum swings between her and Hobbs. Her interrogator has strange behaviour including a bizarre walnut-throwing habit. However the discovery of a body looks to take events outside both of their control. This being Japrisot, there are further twists to come.

Skilfully written and superbly translated by Linda Coverdale who has also translated Marguerite Duras, Jean Echenoz, Emmanuel Carrère, Patrick Chamoiseau, Georges Simenon and Roland Barthes; she reviewed her translation for this reissue but made very little changes. I'm looking forward to exploring more of Sébastien Japrisot's work in the future.

[Frédéric · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sébastien Japrisot wrote several novels, most of which were later adapted in movies Trap for Cinderella, The Sleeping-car murders, The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun, One Deadly Summer, A Very Long Engagement and directly wrote screenplays Farewell friend, And hope to die...

Rider on the Rain is one of these (a 1970 René Clément movie with Charles Bronson and Marlène Jobert- Eva Green’s mother).

I’m a huge fan of Japrisot. I grew up watching the movies or reading the books and screenplays and I’ve always been fond of them all so I’m clearly biased.

The screenplays reads as... a screenplay. No fluff and frills, it cuts to the chase in short sentences. A few settings depictions, some character’s playing indication and dialogues. Period.

But it’s Japrisot so it’s done with style. A bit a of 70’s machism (Chuck Bronson, guys!), a touch of bittersweet irony, a lick of crime and great dialogues stuffed with punchlines. And very cool characters.
I’ve seen the movie of course so I can’t dissociate the book from the pictures so I can’t honestly say if it reads well alone.

You know what? Whatch the movie and read the book. So you’ll know.

[Tina Tamman · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am not surprised to learn it's been made info a film; it reads like film. More than a novel of, say, Graham Greene's, because the author, Japrisot, is always there, reminding us from the start that "we" are observing the two women talk to each other in a confined space. So much of the dialogue is given as if it were a play. It makes the reader, at least this one, uneasy very early on. And the story is small - mostly of confusion. The main thing though is that it works.
Not a favourite of mine of Japrisot's - he is unlikely to have written anything better than "A Very Long Engagement" where characters have time to develop. The Rider is more of an episode, takes place quickly, is over quickly, maybe forgotten quickly.

[Chuckles · Rating 1 out of 5]

A brief description of the plot since the only one on this site is in french: A French housewife is brutally attacked in her home by a stange man she saw earlier emerge from a bus in the rain, carrying a red bag. The next day she has drawn the attention of a clever American man who seems to know her dark secret, which leads to a cat and mouse game between the two.

I didn’t realize until I started reading this that it was actually a novelization of a screenplay Japrisot had written in the late 60s. While this book was first published in the 90s the film was released in 1970 and the book reflects that atmosphere. It was the strange format that made me look up the history of the book and discover this, it is a mix of traditional style storytelling with an omnisicent 3rd person narrator who tells the reader what is happening, describes scenes, characters, gives us backstory and their thoughts, while the dialogue sections are structured like a play/screenplay including some limited stage direction within those parts. Very weird. Example:

Mellie: Bye, Mummy.
It is only after the door has closed that Juliette looks up and replies.
Juliette (with unexpected tenderness): Bye, darling.
She downs the rest of the drink in one swallow.

This format ruined this book for me. I have read numerous plays over the years and I love the format. I have also read some screenplays, one great one being that of Paris, Texas, by Sam Shepard and Lewis Carson. Fantastic. But this mix of the two formats was bizarre. When I read a play/screenplay it is a very different feeling and I understand that going in. I am not ‘in the story’ as much becuase the format is so in your face, you aren’t being ‘told a story’ like with a novel or a memoir where you can get immersed in the story; with a play the abruptness of seeing the lines, and stage direction, the plain language of the set descriptions, the utilitarianess of it all, you don’t get immersed as much when reading it. I am aware I am reading a play and if it is done well I can visualize the characters but its like I am still imagining an actor playing the character, and the set is just that, a set on a stage. It works for what it is.

This mixed format has novel portions where we get large chunks of the plot from the omnisicent narrator; much more than you get in a screenplay and that portion is written like a novel, not as a narrator speaking dialogue as in a play/screenplay via a narrator or character voiceover, so at moments I could get into the story like a novel but because of that format the author frequently must info dump on the reader. And at times those sections have stage direction aspects, eg: “a moment later the blade of a large knife is thrust into the pain de campagne Mellie brought back from the village”. This reads like a scene direction, a shot, especially since it is written in the passive voice. I have never seen this before inna novel and it just didn’t work, it was so distracting. It seems like the publisher wanted a novel from Japrisot and he quickly turned this around with minimal effort or perhaps Japrisot just couldn’t make it into a proper novel since he wrote it as a screenplay. Who knows.

It felt like I was cheated because nowhere on the edition I bought does it explain any of this, there is one section in a small biography of Japrisot that simply mentions this book was made into a movie staring Charles Bronson. Even this feels dishonest since it implies the film was based on this novel, not vice versa.

The story itself, that is the plot, is cool like other Japrisot novels I have read where the protaganist and the reader don’t seem to know exactly what is going on and no one, not even the main character, can be trusted. The characters could have been great but the format kind of ruined their development so they are pretty bare bones. Too bad because this is why I love reading Japrisot, his characters are so cool, especially his female lead characters. Same with the setting, it really didn’t come alive likely because I was seeing it as a screenplay and fake, imagining set up scenes with cameras and a production going on as they shoot the scene. I was not imersed in it. Again, the mixed format ruined it. The cat and mouse game that comes to be more apparent and important is very fun, I will give it that.

The night after finishing the book (it is a very quick read, just a couple of hours) I watched the film this novelization was based on to see how similar it was and if I could get past having read this first and knowing what happens. I read the film was very popular in France and stared Charles Bronson as Dobbs… not who I had originally pictured but it worked, he pulled off the cheshire cat all knowing grin Dobbs was described as having and his “brutish” qualities. But that was all I knew. Its a fun movie. There were little differences, like early Mellie was described in the book as having long hair; actress Jobert in the film did not. “Tuba” became “saxaphone”, etc… not important. It made me wonder why the differences though; perhaps it was as simple as the novel followed original screenplay details as Japrisot had written them, not what was actually shot and the revisions that changed small details like this and others that the filmakers wanted. But for the most part they are one and the same, even using the inside joke name “MacGuffin”.

This is hard to rate, it is a cool Japrisot story with cool characters but it doesn’t work as a “novel” because it really isn’t one. It seems like a half hearted attempt at a novelization of a screenplay at best. This is probably the only time I have thought this, but I would suggest just watching the film. You get absolutely nothing more from reading the book, literally nothing because calling it a novel is disingenuous. Frankly I feel ripped off having bought the book, even though it was a cheap used copy. But being introduced to the film was worth it.

[Tatiana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fun interlude from serious lit.

[Emma · Rating 5 out of 5]

VERDICT: Fabulous game of cat and mouse and excellent psychological thriller.

Last month, when I presented the book Trap for Cinderella by Sébastien Japrisot, I highlighted the fact that it was a bit confusing at times. Today, I am delighted to review another book by Japrisot: Rider on the rain. This one has a more straight line plot and it is really excellent.

My full review is here: https://wordsandpeace.com/2021/10/05/...

[Cliff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tres bon.

[Karen Mace · Rating 4 out of 5]

For a short novel, this is a story that packs a punch! It's very dark and has sinister undertones, and I loved it!

Set in France, in a small riviera resort, this is the story of a housewife, Mellie, who is subjected to an horrific attack by a man who recently shows up in town. You really sense the fear she feels when she's attacked in her own home, and that horror continues into the next door as he sticks around... you'll find yourself totally on her side with how she deals with this 'man'.

And what follows is the aftermath, and the presence of an American in town who seems a little too interested in Mellie and this man - you wonder what his motive is. He's asking way too many questions and she wonders if she can trust him.

There's a lot of dodgy, darker goings on in this book and that intrigue kept me hooked throughout. Pulsating, thrilling and twisted - my kind of book!

[Darius Ostrowski · Rating 4 out of 5]

Talk about tension.... A cat and mouse game between a mysterious American investigator and a French housewife who suffers a horrific attack.

Mellie Mau is attacked by a mysterious stranger, and fights back the only way she can. She thinks she can put it behind her, but the mysterious American Harry Dobbs won't let her off the hook. He is here to solve a murder, and to find a bag of money that's gone missing. Harry and Mellie go around in circles, trying to protect the truth / discover the truth. Throw in an aloof and mysterious husband, an alcoholic mother, and a best friend with her own secrets, put them all in an off season seaside town and you have a wonderful, very French noir mystery.

[Alistair · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Rider on the Rain is based on a film script Japrisot did in 1970. The dated and quite sexist attitude towards women (at the time) aside, the book is an absolute gem. A lean 150 page novella. It's short and on point! No tedious side stories, no cliches, no long winded descriptions. A high-octane plot with a great deal of tension and suspense, and a cast of memorabe characters that you'll remember long after you've finished the book. My favorite part: the title... Argubably the most original title I've come across of a crime novel. The rider must have ridden in on the rain, says one of the characters in the book. And that mysterious odd looking rider will set in motion a series of life shattering events... Publishers Weekly gave the book a starred review. Well deserved! I read the Linda Coverdale translation (Gallic Books 2021 edition).

[JournalsTLY]

Read the English translation ( by Linda Coverdale 1999) . Assault and tragedy in a small rainy French village . Murder on a Tuesday and a subdued resolution by Saturday. Mellie bites her fingernails till it shows.

In between, Mellie is harassed and beaten by an American colonel , finds out that her friend slept with her husband and has to bear the burden of an innocent woman being judged guilty for a murder she did not commit - or so she (Millie) thinks

[Caterina Pierre · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read Rider on the Rain by Sébastien Japrisot for the Albertine Book Club in New York. I enjoyed it, and it was an easy read in English. Mellie Mau is a quiet, simple girl who is married to a rough Italian (are there any soft hearted Italian men in novels?), and she helps her mother in her bowling alley-bar. One day, a stranger shows up in their small town, where everything is closed in the fall. This stranger seems to follow Mellie, for reasons that are unclear. Eventually they meet, in less than ideal circumstances. Mellie takes matters into her own hands, as she feels threatened by this stranger. The problem is, the stranger is wanted by Harry Dobbs, an American something (cop? detective? hired assassin? You'll find out), and Dobbs is willing, at any cost, to get his man.
Many of Japrisot's books were eventually turned into movies, and Rider on the Rain seems to have been originally a screenplay written by Japrisot in 1970, and made into a movie starring Charles Bronson and Marlène Jobert. This novelized version of the movie was published in 1992. So, it reads like a novelized version of a screenplay, which I found a bit odd. But it was a fun and fast read, and I would be willing to watch the movie after reading the novelization of the screenplay.

[John-Paul Fontelo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short read but very engaging, I read it in French so not sure if I understood everything. The parts that I did fully understand were fascinating because Japrisot chose to reveal information only at the right time. You don't know what Dobbs intentions were the majority of the time he just presented as a "beast".

[femcel fatale · Rating 4 out of 5]

if i had a nickel for every time sebastien japrisot wrote a book/film script about an american annoying the fuck out of a french person for 2 hours i'd have two nickels. which isn't a lot but it's weird that it happened twice.

[Tony · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reads just like a Claude Chabrol film script.

[Chloe Wardle · Rating 2 out of 5]

very strange

[David Way · Rating 4 out of 5]

How am I the first one to rate this book?? It was actually pretty good. Very short which I appreciate but it sort of got a little confusing. Great great beginning.. ending was so so

[Dave Thomas · Rating 2 out of 5]

http://electrichalibut.blogspot.com/2...

[Anne · Rating 1 out of 5]

illisible....

[Danielle Lafrance · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellente structure narrative, économie de mots, suspense des plus efficace