Letter from France: On assignment
A famous tower and clouds, Paris. By Jean Ruaud.
Dear DB’S readers —
The next four months I’ll be on assignment on a big photographic project. A little French publishing house commissioned me for doing the illustrations of a book about Nestor Burma, the central character of a series of crime novels by French author Léo Malet. I have a long list of places and buildings in Paris to photography under the supervision of the book’s author. Each published picture will receive a quote from the mystery novels as caption. The pictures will in black & white. The book will be on sale next October.
Nestor Burma is a fictional character created by Léo Malet in 1942. There are 33 novels with Nestor Burma as the central character. All novels are set in Paris, each in a different arrondissement, each of a different atmosphere. Burma belongs to the tradition of the hard boiled detectives like Philip Marlowe. It’s a French Marlowe if you like, but less depressed and bitter than Chandler’s Marlowe. He is a private detective working on his own in the “Fiat Lux” detective agency in Paris with his secretary Hélène Chatelain, who is hopelessly in love with him. Each novel describes the Paris neighborhood where it is set in and the surroundings mood.
The book will be a fictional biography of Nestor Burma, with many chapters devoted to other topics related to Burma and Malet. It will be included in a series of books dedicated to fictional biographies of popular heroes. There are already Fantômas, Maigret, Sherlock Holmes, Arsène Lupin, Nero Wolfe, Dracula, Frankenstein, Miss Maple, Conan, James Bond etc.
I look forward to do this commission. It will bring me in all places in Paris and help me rediscover and re-visit the city I love. It’s a really challenging assignment and my first that I will be payed for!
Later,
Jean
“Monde festif”, Jardins des Tuileries, Paris. By Jean Ruaud.