Cop an Eiffel . .

Maxim Jakubowski gives Pulp Pusher the low down on the dark underbelly of the city of light as Serpent's Tail publishes his new Paris Noir collection of short fiction featuring a host of names, including: Barry Gifford, Stella Duffy and Jason Starr.

By Maxim Jakubowski

MY FATHER was Polish and left the country in his late teens to fight on the good side in the Spanish Civil War as part of the International Brigades. My mother was a British leftie. They met during WW2 in London, hence my existence.

By a twist of fate, my parents moved to France when I was only three years old and my first encounter with the dark side of Paris was when, a year or so later, I was parachuted into the ecole maternelle Sorbier and, little British boy that I happened to be (albeit with a Polish name of sorts), was quickly bullied and mildly beaten up by all the other kids because, a long lasting grievance in France, the British had once burned Joan of Arc!

Needless to say, becoming fluent in French became a personal priority, and I promptly made certain my true nationality was soon forgotten as well as finding out that Joan of Arc’s fiery demise was actually at the hands of her French compatriots...

To cut a long story short, I went on to live in Paris until my mid-20s and have since cultivated a curious relationship with France and the French. You could say that I love France and am still not quite sure about the French (although as the tradition goes, some of my best friends happen to be French).

My love of Paris has never changed, a city of delights and contradictions which still manages to fascinate, surprise and unsettle me on every repeated visit to old and new haunts. Much better commentators than me have waxed rhapsodic over the centuries about this city of light, its culture, its geography, its soul, its uniqueness, but being a foreigner in Paris, a spy beneath my bilingual cloak, has also allowed me different insights into the character of the city, its rainbow assortment of people and quirks. Indeed, Paris has proven a magnet for decades to generations of foreign writers, artists, more than just tourists and this head-on clash of visions has generated some truly wonderful books, films and art.

When it came to follow-up my LONDON NOIR anthology of crime

and dark stories of over 10 years ago, it soon became quickly

obvious to me that I should tackle Paris, if only to compare my

own vision of the city with that of others with a different

background, tastes and idiosyncrasies.

I knew that many crime and mystery writers of my acquaintance

had also spent time there or, in some cases, still did or made

regular visits and it made sense to invite a rather prestigious

assortment of authors each to interpret the theme of PARIS NOIR

in their own, often inimitable way. I think the results speak for

themselves and offer a rich and varied panorama of Paris today,

a psychohistory through the lens of noir fiction.

The writers and friends who climbed onboard hail from the UK, the USA, Canada and also France, and all confess to an ambiguous relationship with the French capital. Some stories embrace history and politics, particularly those by French authors, while others examine crime and social ills, yet others even skirt fantasy, but all display a strong sense of place and take the reader on a thrilling ride through familiar and unfamiliar streets and quartiers, which even the literary tourist knows little about.

It was particularly exciting to assemble some of my favourite authors (and in many cases personal friends) under one cover. Major SF and fantasy writer Mike Moorcock recently moved to Paris from Texas and is also one of my oldest friends (we have known each other since the age of 16...) so was a natural, as was Jerome Charyn (whom I used to publish in my editorial days) who now shares his time between New York and Paris.

Then I discovered that Jason Starr and Scott Phillips both spent time in the City of Lights; actually Scott delivered his story written in both French and English! And the itinerant soul of Sparkle Hayter recently moved to Mumbai after several years in the French capital.

John Williams busked there; John Harvey haunted the jazz clubs of the Left Bank; Jake Lamar, a wonderful black American author still unknown in the UK is now based in Paris since he married a French woman.

I could explain at length why I chose these particular authors. And which five local authors could I include? There are so many of them which I enjoy reading (being brought up in France helped me become bilingual): sadly Fred Vargas never writes short stories but the wonderful Romain Slocombe (who is going to translate his fantastic noir books set in Japan?) and Dominique Sylvain (who also lives the Far East but manages to remain a particularly quintessential Parisian author) do and were happy to come onboard, as did Dominique Manotti and the prolific Marc Villard and Jean-Hughes Oppel.

I lived 22-years in Paris (I’ve actually never been to school in the UK, except for a final year at the French Lycee in London) but I’m ready to confess that after reading the stories in PARIS NOIR, I now want to go back (via Eurostar of course) and explore further. Under cover of darkness, wearing a trench coat or what have you, and of course I will steer well clear of Cornelia: she knows my number!

:: Paris Noir is published by Serpent's Tail, priced £8.99, US$14.95, CAN$18.00.