Three shades of noir

In the days of cheap paperbacks, publishers sometimes printed two pulp novels in one volume, back to back. Ariel Winter has done one better, because The Twenty- Year Death consists of three novels, dealing with murders committed over the course of two decades, each told in the style of a great crime writer.

The first is set in 1931 France, hommage to Georges Simenon’s Inspector Maigret. A corpse found floating in the flooded drains of Verargent turns out to come from the local prison, from which there is no escape. Inspector Pelleter has just visited the prison to interview a serial killer he has arrested, and is drawn into the investigation. Among the anomalies he discovers is the murdered man’s daughter, the beautiful Clothilde-ma-Fleur, still a teenager but living near the prison and married to a successful American writer named Shem Rosenkrantz.

Maigret novels are drenched in atmosphere; their physical setting reflects the psychological background to the crimes, and Winter gets this perfectly. Pelleter cuts through, almost forensically, the many-layered barricades thrown up to outsiders by a provincial French town, even as more murdered prisoners are discovered. And his interviews with the serial torturer ofchildren in the prison put the puzzle of the investigation into a very modern context, giving Pelleter a perspective even Maigret might envy.

The Falling Star is set ten years later in Hollywood, where detective Dennis Foster is hired by an old friend working as security at a film studio. The French leading lady, Chloe Rose, is convinced she is being stalked. Chloe, of course, is Clothilde,  having moved with Shem to America and become a star; but she seems to be cracking under the weight of her success and Shem’s relative lack of it.