Movie Stars and Crime Fiction

Jean-Paul Belmondo on the cover of the Italian translation of Meurs pas, on a du monde !,

Milano, Mondadori, 1981

The intermedia nature of Crime Fiction facilitates its international circulation. Crime Books benefit from the aura of Crime Films. Publishers are understandably tempted to figuratively suggest such links between printed works and moving images. It is frequent to find references to cinema on book covers. In the case of translated books, this reference to familiar icons helps to reduce the “strangeness” of a foreign work, by highlighting the quasi-universal nature of its narrative. Audiences are thus reassured that the particular object of a given translation is part of a global cultural form. The iconic images of Movie Stars are a pragmatic and economical way to put the stamp of a dominant cultural industry on exogenous books. Their perceived national particularism, which might otherwise be seen as a deterrent for the mass market is thus watered down. The celebrity of the actors represented serves as an international currency.

But capturing images of celebrities can produce amusing shortcuts and distortions. The few following examples suggest such cultural clashes. These are productive as they reveal hidden truths about the local perception of the books thus marketed. They explain the context of their adaptation to a different cultural environment. They show what mediations were used to facilitate this international transfer. And they sometimes leave us wondering why…