Les Français de la Série Noire (2)

This chapter in an edited volume to be published in autumn 2015 (Paris, Gallimard), looks at the global output of French authors, representing a corpus of 600 novels, in an iconic and genre defining series of 2500 Crime Fiction books published since 1945 by Les Editions Gallimard. It contrasts the view usually held of a predominance of American Authors and shows, in the period considered, the role of French authors in defining the series identity, their decisive contribution to its success, and how they not only distance themselves from an American model, but partially reinvent it.