Interview with Paul Halter (Part II)

Yesterday, I posted Part I of an interview between Roland Lacourbe and Paul Halter. Now here is Part II, which deals more with Halter's own writing career. Both these parts originally appeared in Le Masque's Paul Halter omnibus, Volume 1, and have been translated with the permission of M. Roland Lacourbe.

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Now we’ll begin to tackle your own work. So, traditional question: what brought you to write? The fundamental reason?

Fundamental? … (Long silence.) I believe I wanted to follow up on the investigations of Dr. Fell and H. M. Particularly Dr. Fell. 

La Malédiction de Barberousse (Barbarossa’s Curse)

Interview with Paul Halter (Part I)

Paul Halter is arguably the current master of the impossible crime mystery. I have read ten of his books (one of which was a short story collection) and I was consistently impressed with the way he handles variation after variation on the impossible crime. He has explained away everything from the phenomenon of bilocation (La Quatrième Porte; translated as The Fourth Door) to an invisible man (Le Diable de Dartmoor; meaning The Devil of Dartmoor). The explanations are often simple and elegant, and at the top of his game, Halter can write books and puzzles to rival those of his hero, John Dickson Carr.

Paul Halter

French publisher Le Masque published three omnibuses of Halter’s works, and each omnibus contains a preface. I was particularly fascinated by the introduction to Volume 1, which is an interview between Roland Lacourbe and Paul Halter. It had plenty of interesting information on Halter and his approach to mystery-writing, and I thought to myself “Wouldn’t it be great to get this interview translated?” However, I didn’t act on this right away because I didn’t want to inadvertently get myself into any legal trouble.

However, the thought persisted, and eventually I was able to get in touch with M. Roland Lacourbe via e-mail, who most graciously gave me permission to proceed with the translation. I'm indebted to John Dickson Carr biographer Douglas G. Greene for making this possible. I would like to thank M. Roland Lacourbe for his kindness and the support he's shown throughout the project. I would also like to thank those who took a look at this translation and gave me helpful suggestions on improvements, particularly Barry Ergang, Xavier Lechard, and John Pugmire. Finally, another set of thanks goes out to Xavier Lechard, who helped me with footnotes about figures who will likely be unfamiliar to English-speaking readers. 

Ministry of Miracles

John Dickson Carr: Scribe du Miracle is a fascinating book by Roland Lacourbe, a French critic who is no stranger to this blog. I have mentioned Lacourbe several times before, usually in connection with Paul Halter. I’ve found Lacourbe’s introductions to Halter’s works excellent, and he conducts a brilliant interview with Halter in the first of the three Masque omnibuses.

Unfortunately, to my knowledge, there was only one copy of Lacourbe’s book in all Canadian libraries, and they wanted me to pay around $20 to get it via Interlibrary Loan. It is sometimes available on sites like PriceMinister, but for rather high prices— the lowest I’ve found right now is 36,10€. So it seemed like I was doomed to not read this book anytime soon.

Until I found out something about my university library: they could get a hold of Lacourbe’s book via RACER (their version of Interlibrary Loans) for free! I rejoiced at the prospect and placed a request, expecting to wait a few months. I got the book after two weeks, and have been reading it on the side for quite some time now.

Dead Man's Chest

Bien qu’admirateur inconditionnel de Carr et amoureux sans frein de son art de conteur, je me dois de constater qu’aucun de ses ouvrages les plus réussis – je dis bien : aucun ! – ne contient la grandeur tragique des dernières pages de La Malédiction de Barberousse.

As an unconditional admirer of [John Dickson] Carr and unreservedly loving the art of his storytelling, I wish to ascertain that none of his most successful works – I mean it: none! – contain the tragic grandeur of the final pages of La Malédiction de Barberousse.

—Roland Lacourbe, preface to La Malédiction de Barberousse (Barbarossa’s Curse)

(My apologies to Roland Lacourbe if I have butchered his words beyond belief in an attempt to translate them into English.)

The story behind the publication of La Malédiction de Barberousse (Barbarossa’s Curse) is interesting. It was originally self-published by Paul Halter in 1986, and it won the Prix de la Société des écrivains d’Alsace-Lorraine. It introduced Dr. Alan Twist, who would star in the award-winning tour-de-force La Quatrième Porte (The Fourth Door) the following year. It would be published by Le Masque in 1995. It’s even shorter than La Quatrième Porte, and it’s an interesting look at Paul Halter’s imagination. That being said, there are a lot of flaws in this book as well, which seems to be taking a nosedive until it redeems itself with a stunning ending.

Sur les lieux du crime

Those who regularly check in to At the Scene of the Crime probably know by now of the fondness I’ve developed for Paul Halter. His book Le Roi du désordre (The Lord of Misrule) was a very flawed book, but one I loved reading, which reminded me just why I love mysteries. The freshness of Halter’s impossible crimes is invigorating— not since John Dickson Carr have we been graced with an author who makes impossible crimes so central to his work. I eagerly devoured La Tête du tigre (The Tiger’s Head) and Le Tigre borgne (The One-Eyed Tiger): while I found Tête flawed, I found Le Tigre borgne a masterpiece, which left me eagerly hungering after more by Halter.

I decided to satisfy this craving with Halter’s 1994 novel À 139 pas de la mort (139 Steps from Death), the second of five books found in my Paul Halter omnibus (Volume 3). This novel, like La Tête du tigre, stars the detective duo of Dr. Alan Twist and Inspector Archibald Hurst. Again, although they are rather colourless, I find this refreshing— Halter doesn’t waste time giving us Hurst’s marital problems or Twist’s struggles against agoraphobia. They are just the detective duo, with Twist taking on the role of the Great Detective, and Hurst being his Watson figure.

Ce sont des traces de sang...

Paul Halter impressed me considerably with his highly imaginative and interesting book, Le Roi du Désordre, which was flawed, but at the same time offered two really good impossible scenarios with a plot that kept my interest all the way into the wee hours of the morning. So perhaps it shouldn’t come as a huge surprise that I was anxious to read another Halter, and I finally settled on La Tête du Tigre (The Tiger’s Head).

I chose this book on the strength of an introduction penned by Roland Lacourbe to my Paul Halter omnibus, which contains Le Roi du Désordre and four other books. In the excellent aforementioned introduction, Lacourbe talks about Halter’s two main characters in his longest series: Inspector Archibald Hurst and Dr. Alan Twist. According to his introduction, when Paul Halter wrote La Malédiction de Barberousse, he was hoping to resurrect the career of the great Dr. Gideon Fell, but John Dickson Carr’s estate categorically refused to permit him to use the characters. So, with a bit of tweaking, removing the more obvious references, Dr. Fell became Dr. Twist, and Inspector Hadley became Inspector Hurst.