A few months ago, the writer Victor Guilbert left the City of Light for the one that never sleeps. Every day or so, he crosses, a stone’s throw from his new apartment, the Times Square district and its mythical Broadway avenue, where legends, like dreams, are made and undone, where the stars stir and go out as quickly as the neon lights that line the biggest theaters in the world.
For the author and playwright, who had dreamed for a while of writing a detective novel in the world of theatre, inspiration could only be there. “I really like the worlds behind closed doors, to which the theater lends itself particularly well”, indicates Victor Guilbert, met in the offices of the Duty during his recent visit to Montreal.
“This world is also populated by particular personalities — the actors, who are in the light, but also the lighting designer, the director and all those who are in the shadows — who help to provide balance and create an atmosphere effective. The theater is equally suited to mystery. I remember being marked, as a teenager, by the disturbing atmosphere of the novel The Phantom of the Opera (1910) by Gaston Leroux, which is extremely effective. »
Fogsthe third detective novel in a series starring former police officer Hugo Boloren, takes the reader behind the scenes of the Edmond Theater, an old French theater haunted by the past glory of Sarah Bernhardt and by a reputation as a happiness that dries up from first to first.
Generally letting himself be guided by his instinct and his desires to develop the contours of his intrigues, Victor Guilbert this time had to deal with an additional challenge. Even before thinking about his story or the narrative arc of his characters, the novelist already knew the end of his story, inspired by an anecdote of a few lines told by the playwright Sacha Guitry. “I was 16 when I read this short but incredible testimony from the playwright, about which I can’t say anything for fear of revealing the outcome of my book. But already, at the time, I found that there was enough to build an entire novel from these few lines. »
Characters and atmospheres
Marcel Marchand, an eccentric French secret service spy, hides a mysterious object in the Edmond Theater’s huge store of props, just before he is assassinated on the spot by CIA agents. Fearing that the American intelligence services will know the identity of their agents, the French spies have no other choice but to ask Hugo Boloren – an unknown stranger – to go to New York to infiltrate the theater and recover the precious package.
It’s true that I really like strong, slightly quirky characters. I think this reflex comes to me from the theater, where it is important that each actor has quality material to work with. Similar personalities don’t work very well on stage.
With his intuition as his only weapon, the ex-investigator gropes his way through the twists and turns of the strange establishment and among the mysterious characters who gravitate there, including an exhibitionist director, a stage manager with the air of Mary Poppins, a coffee-loving parrot Irishman, a blind light designer and the ghost of a grieving old actress. And then there’s Félix, the caretaker with Down’s syndrome, the only witness to the murder.
It is the latter, moreover, who gave Victor Guilbert the impetus to write this new adventure of Hugo Boloren. “My novels are always born from a scene or a strong place. For this one, I had this image of a Down’s syndrome person in front of a lot of theater props, which serves as a protective barrier and prevents anyone from entering. »
In this gallery of eccentrics, all of Victor Guilbert’s talent for creating outstanding and excessively cinematographic characters is revealed, all of whom could become the hero of their own novel. “It’s true that I really like strong, slightly offbeat characters. I think this reflex comes to me from the theater, where it is important that each actor has quality material to work with. Similar personalities don’t work very well on stage. »
Write for fun
Also a master of atmospheres and sets, the author has taken the habit, in his detective trilogy, of developing and investing a particular atmosphere to advance the plot. The first volume, fluke (Hugo Roman, 2021), took place in the heart of a disturbing village planted in the middle of a vertiginous forest of fir trees. The second, Terra nullius (Hugo Roman, 2022) — winner of the Le Point prize for European thrillers — was located in a landfill overwhelmed by the heat wave, on the border of France and Belgium.
This time, Victor Guilbert has chosen to plunge New York into an unusual and tenacious fog, which reinforces the suffocating and distressing impression of the camera. “I like to create something a little offbeat, and the weather is the perfect tool to transform a place. In Terra nullius, I imposed on the characters a heat wave in a place where it is never really hot. I use the same mechanism in Fogs. It’s not very realistic that the Big Apple is shrouded in mist, which is always quickly swept away by the wind from the sea. It adds an additional anxiety, which is felt by both the characters and the readers. »
As usual, the writer also has fun slipping a few literary and cinematographic references – some more easily spotted than others – into his novel; a process that delights him. While Albert Camus appears from the first sentence, others, such as Romain Gary, Boris Vian and John Kennedy Toole, hide among the characters, concepts, quotations. ” As Fogs takes place in the United States, I wanted to give a nod to this American author, winner of a Pulitzer Prize. I literally retrieved the description of a character from The conspiracy of fools (1980), a hot-dog salesman, who I put in my novel. It’s a game that I love. »