(click to enlarge)

The three leading series of Crime Fiction  which were launched  in France after the war are :  “La Série Noire” (Gallimard, 1945-) ; “Un Mystère” (Presses de la Cité, 1949-1972) and “Spécial-Police” (Fleuve Noir,1949-1987).  This post sets out to compare them  visually, on the basis of their most frequently recurring title words. No translation needed.  (I think ?)

The following representation is based on the most frequent words in  the titles of all the books published in each series. The size of the words represented here is proportional to their total amount of occurrences in the titles.

Série Noire, Paris,  Gallimard, 2743 Titles (between 1945- and 2005)

Un Mystère, Paris, Presses de la Cité, 769 titles (first serie :1949-1966 )

Spécial-Police, Paris, Fleuve Noir, 2075 titles (1949-1987)