(With thanks to François Rivière)

The  “Troubles Thriller” is an international genre. Albeit  peripheral,  and taking place in a small country,  the conflict in Northern Ireland has generated a flurry of crime novels set there during the Troubles.  In addition to the several hundreds Crime and spy novels written in Britain and in America on the ” Troubles” in Northern Ireland, there have been a number of novels written on this subject by European Crime authors and published in their own countries. These works have very rarely been translated into English (nor, as a rule in many other languages), as they primarily targeted their  own domestic market, and sought to offer there a similar fare to the Tom Clancy, Jack Higgins and others who dominated the genre. They might be derivative, but this in itself does not make them redundant.  Their take on the conflict is often highly idiosyncratic. They are controversial, but they were read by hundred thousands, if not by millions of readers.   The political views they display and the representations of Ireland which they carry are of interest, making the books  precious sources  for a cultural history  of European responses to the situation in  Ireland. With all its stereotyping, essentialisms, and anachronisms, San-Antonio, for example, has set no less than four novels in his eponymous Fleuve Noir Series in Ireland, starting after the beginning of the troubles.

Hue, dada ! (October 1977)

Laissez pousser les asperges (October 1984)

La Fête des paires (October 1986)

Les eunuques ne sont jamais chauves (June 1995)

Unlike many others (for example Gerard de Villiers’s Furie à Belfast (1974), which, incidentally, was translated into English (The Belfast Connection, Pinnacle Books, 1976) and other languages), San-Antonio’s narration seems intent on  avoiding to exploit the troubles. The novels conspicuously write around them. San-Antonio apparently tries to find a way to write about Ireland (and what is more, about violence in Ireland) almost without mentioning the elephant in the room, the war raging outside of the diegesis and broadcast at the same time in the media worldwide.  The avoidance of binary representations of parties in the conflict is not enough however to prevent a static view of Ireland . Is it rather the opposite, as in keeping away from political events the books tend to present a de-historicized vision of  an Ireland, not so much permanent, as suspended in time.

 Another, very different example of European creative readings of recent Irish History is  Le Serment de Shannon, the novel by Claude Rank,  published in 1975 in the Espionnage, Fleuve Noir Series. Rank, born 1925, a veteran  of  the battles in Italy and Germany towards the end of WWII, is primarily known as a crime fiction author. He published more than 40 novels in the Spécial Police Series (see appendix, below). Following his publisher’s (Fleuve Noir) encouragements to embrace the marketable Spy fiction genre, he became, too, one of the leading authors of the “Espionnage” Series.

Le Serment de Shannon is part of his ” Le Monde en marche” novels, scattered around warzones and flashpoints of 1960’s and 1970’s diplomatic history.

It is well informed and well researched,  places and streets are precisely located,  and it captures a vivid sense of Belfast during the troubles.  It shares many features with Troubles thrillers. Northern Ireland is depicted like a living hell, a big slum, torn by hatred and  barbarism. Dirt, backwardness, promiscuity and narrow horizons are the recurring tropes in the descriptions throughout the book (in contrast with the romantic depiction of the West Coast of Ireland in the final part of the book).  The lead character is a British colonel. But there is a French twist.  The colonel, Victor Lisney, has, rather improbably, French ancestors, and his wife (called Mary Frances) and daughters now live in France and have sworn never to come back to Belfast.  He is actually sympathetic to the Irish Revolution. Injustice, inequalities, exploitation and the organised destitution of entire sections of the population (and the hypocrisy and  moral bankrupcy of those who preside over it) horrify him.  Jailed for his part in a bloody terrorist attack, he returns to Belfast as a ghost, a shadow of his former self. Many disturbing scenes of abuse, torture and humiliation follow this return. More disturbing even are the various comparisons between the British troops and German occupation of France during WWII.  As such it  reflects less on the British Army and police and more on the author’s own background and ideological framework (and that of his readers). Unavoidably, for example, Bernadette Devlin, the young Socialist, Mid Ulster, Republican MP, is compared to Joan of Arc.

And it is a remarkable coincidence that during a stroll in County Kerry, in 1969, Lisney had the good fortune to see the General de Gaulle, a welcome, albeit in the context rather confusing, symbol of resistance for the French readers.

The sympathy for the republican cause, however, is far from being undivided. It  does not prevent the author from showing  a number of the IRA characters as rapists, paedophiles and cynical materialists. It is  not surprising hence that  anticipating a pattern to be found in many, contemporary “post-troubles” thrillers, the  narration finds its resolution  in the liquidation and alienation of the terrorists. In doing so, the novel deserts the  present in favour  of both an uncertain and violent future, and f a mythified history of rebellion. The text inscribes subversions, both past and future,  diegetically and metaphorically in the forbidding geology of the caves of the Burren region, in County Clare. Buried in the limestone rocks, facing the ocean, this subversion, materialised in a clandestine shipment of tons of (French) weapons can, it is suggested, resurface or wash away.

Appendix : Novels by Claude Rank in the Special Police Series

121	Les noyés sont aveugles	1957
130	Du sang dans la glace	1957
150	Tuez la reine	1958
175	Plaidoyer pour l’assassin	1959
182	Dialogue aux enfers	1959
202	Les os du massacre	1959
222	Les eaux malsaines	1960
243	Du fond de la nuit	1960
254	Les rats au piège	1961
276	Tourbillon	1961
277	Le sang et la cendre	1961
295	Pont aux dames	1962
310	Les anges noirs	1962
327	Les seigneurs écorchés	1962
337	La tombe des autres	1963
349	La fosse	1963
372	Le tunnel	1963
401	Juste un drame	1964
416	Rappelle-toi, Karen…	1964
457	Treize femmes	1965
499	Tous les diamants du monde	1965
541	La grande traque	1966
553	Timm de Coronado	1966
600	Le dernier bus pour Matmara	1967
625	Chiens fous du mirage	1967
667	L’avion blanc pour Zurich	1968
728	The bluff	1969
801	Je quitte l’avenue	1970
830	Les petites filles de mai	1970
885	Si…	1971
921	Quai des typhons	1971
957	La falaise	1972
1001	La nuit de cristal	1972
1043	La calanque	1973
1072	La route de Mandalay	1973
1136	Les barreaux	1974
1363	L’arc en ciel du bout du monde	1977
1377	Camarade de mort	1977
1612	Tous les diamants du monde	1981
1639	Timm de Coronado	1981
1722	A l’huile de hache	1982
1742	Le feu au train	1982
1783	Larmes de plomb	1983
1789	La chatte sur un tas brillant	1983