When he launched the landmark series “Le Masque” in 1927 Albert Pigasse resorted to publishing English authors such as Christie, Sayers, Valentin Williams, Edgar Wallace, Patricia Wentworth and John Dickson Carr. This was, he claimed, because there were no French Crime Fiction writers at the time. But this was  of course not quite true. Publishers like Ferenczi and Tallandier had long offered an outlet to French authors writing crime novels. And Pigasse would soon publish some of them, like Léon Groc, and André Charpentier in Le Masque.  So, what was French Crime Fiction like between the wars ? And what were the series in which Crime Fiction was published, prior to 1927 ? This post looks at two series titled “Le Roman Policier”. They were published by Ferenczi, between 1916 and 1926.  It lists all the authors published there, with the title of their books. To assess the respective weight of each author, titles  are sorted here  by authors and then by dates.

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