Dynamite Versus QED

Nestor Burma #2

by Léo Malet

The fifth Leo Malet title in the current series of six. It is springtime in Paris, and there's love - and murder - in the air. Gumshoe Nestor Burma follows an attractive girl who gives him the slip and then finds himself under suspicion of the murder of a man he's never met.

Genres: Noir, Crime

Paperback

First published January 1, 1945

About the author

Léo Malet est né à Montpellier en 1909. Attiré par l'écriture et l'anarchie, il décide à l'âge de 16 ans de « monter » à Paris, ou pour survivre il effectue une multitude de petits métiers. En 1930, il fait la connaissance d'André Breton et découvre le surréalisme, dont il devient un familier. Après la guerre, Léo Malet rencontre Louis Chavance qui lui suggère d'écrire des romans policiers, un genre encore inexistant en France. Malet produit alors d'alertes contrefaçons de Hard boiled américains qu'il signe des pseudonymes de Frank Harding ou Léo Latimer. En 1943, il publie sous son véritable nom, 120 rue de la gare, un roman policier très français qui met en scène pour la première fois l'illustre Nestor Burma. C'est en 1953, lors d'une promenade, que Léo Malet aura l'idée de faire de son privé un nouveau « piéton de Paris ». Le soleil naît derrière le Louvre inaugure la série des Nouveaux Mystères de Paris, un an après. Chroniques réalistes de la vie des quartiers parisiens, Les Nouveaux Mystères de Paris donnent définitivement à son personnage ses lettres de noblesse. Avec 55 titres (dont 29 consacrés à Nestor Burma), Léo Malet a bien mérité des Lettres françaises. Il est mort en 1996.

(source: Pocket.fr)


+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Leo Malet was born in Montpellier. He had little formal education and began work as a cabaret singer at "La Vache Enragee" in Montmartre, Paris in 1925.

In the 1930s, he was closely aligned with the Surrealists, and was close friends with André Breton, René Magritte and Yves Tanguy, amongst others. During this time, he published several volumes of poetry.

He died in Châtillon, a little town just south of Paris where he had lived for most of his life, four days before his 87th birthday.

Though having dabbled in many genres, he is most famous for Nestor Burma, the anti-hero of Les Nouveaux Mystères de Paris. Burma, a cynical private detective, is an astute speaker of argot (French slang), an ex-Anarchist, a serial monogamist and an inveterate pipe smoker. Of the 33 novels detailing his adventures, eighteen take place in a sole arrondissement of Paris, in a sub-series of his exploits which Malet dubbed the "New Mysteries of Paris" quoting Eugene Sue's seminal "feuilleton"; though he never completed the full 20 arrondissements as he originally planned. Apart from the novels, five short stories were also published, bringing the total of Burma's adventures to 38.

The comic artist Jacques Tardi adapted some of his books much to the author's approval claiming that he was the sole person to have visually understood his books; Tardi also provided cover illustrations for the Fleuve Noir editions of the novels, released from the 1980s onward.

Reviews

[Bernard Convert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un chef d'oeuvre en son genre amha. Celui de la première génération du policier "dur à cuire" à la française. A cette époque il y a beaucoup de coïncidences dans les histoires et tous les personnages, même apparemment anodins, jouent un rôle dans l'intrigue. Ceci au détriment du réalisme qui s'imposera plus tard dans le polar. Ici, c'est encore les codes du roman feuilleton populaire. Par ailleurs, c'est le premier livre (le second, après "120 rue de la gare", où on est plutôt à Lyon, en zone nono) que je lis qui évoque la France occupée, avec ses alertes, ses abris, sa défense passive, ses cartes de rationnement, ses Ausweisen qui permettent de circuler la nuit... Ceci n'empêche pas les affaires criminelles privées de tourner rondement... J'ai admiré la maestria avec laquelle Léo Malet, tout anarchiste qu'il soit, s'arrange pour que la justice soit faite, le meurtrier puni, la morale sauve, le butin restitué à son légitime propriétaire, la Banque de France... et Nestor Burma consolé dans les bras de son seul grand amour, qui restera platonique je crois, sa secrétaire Hélène...

[Graziano · Rating 3 out of 5]

Decisamente Leo Malet con La trilogia nera ha raggiunto il suo apice e non sembra che con la serie di Nestor Burma possa tornare sulla vetta.

Due proiettili curiosi, per vedere cosa avesse nella pancia, si erano aperti un varco e non erano piu' voluti uscire. La vita, disgustata da una simile vicinanza, era invece fuggita dai buchi fatti dai nuovi inquilini. (21)

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Written in 1945, this French PI novel has aged reasonably well. Nestor Burma, based in Paris in 1942, accidentally gets involved in the aftermath of a murder committed during an air raid. There are a few twists and turns before a fairly dark ending but it’s not as compelling as modern examples. The war takes a back seat to a traditional PI story

[AC · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not terribly interesting — the writing is flat, and the mood consists mostly in the street names, which mean little to me. I picked this up (Malet) from a reference made by the unreliable lead character in Amelie Northomb’s Hygiene. So maybe I got tricked! I have a few of these in pdf, so I’ll withhold final judgment for now. But not off to a brilliant start

[Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent little noir- interesting characters, in an interesting milieu, with snappy dialogue. Some have complained of a similarity to a certain Bogart movie, but I do not find it too much and the similarity if it is purposeful is well executed.
Only marred by a reliance early on on a coincidence so unlikely as to be almost supernatural.

[Ward · Rating 3 out of 5]

When the fat man character was introduced, plot similarities with the Maltese Falcon bubbled up and I wondered if Dynamite Versus QED was written before or after that classic. #3 in the English-transalated portion of the Nest Burma series and the first full novel I've managed to read since the global COVID-19 pandemic arrived.

[Orinoco Womble (tidy bag and all) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bogart meets Burma in this convoluted tale of gold, guns and girls, with a little blackmail, a mysterious veiled woman and a circus dwarf thrown in. I had thought that the trope of the bad guy falling or jumping from a height was poor scripting on the part of the TV series; unfortunately it turns up already in No. 2 of the written novels, titled in French Nestor Burma Contre CQFD. The cover art to the French edition is deceptive to say the very least; don't get your hopes up, this is not Mickey Spillane!

Published in 1945, we are treated to an air raid, Luftwaffe over Paris and the realities of rationing, though in this case Burma has no trouble using his office phone. A quick read, though I found my French tested by the 1940s argot.