Mysteries of the past and four-handed enigmas

They have been writing together for nearly 20 years, at a rate of more than one novel per year. Historical and esoteric thrillers that have a combined three million readers to date and have been translated into more than fifteen languages.

We meet French writers Éric Giacometti and Jacques Ravenne while they are passing through – for the very first time – Quebec in June, for a few events in bookstores to present the latest in their series about the Freemason police officer Antoine Marcas, The key and the cross.

Watching them throw jokes at each other and complete each other’s thoughts, we can see right away that they get along like thieves in a fair. A union that is quite extraordinary in itself, since if duos are quite common among crime writers, they are the only ones in France among their contemporaries – but above all the only ones to have lasted for so long.

“We have complete confidence in the other’s view,” says Jacques Ravenne, “because we know that a writer who writes alone, when he gets off to a bad start, he goes all the way and the book is bad. We always listen with interest to the other’s position, we never argue. When Éric says that the chapter needs to be redone, it needs to be redone.”

It must be said that the two novelists have known each other since their school days in Toulouse. “At the time,” says Éric Giacometti, “we read the same books about mysteries, the Templars, the Grail, and we really believed in them. Toulouse is next to regional departments that are led by legends like that of the Cathars, for example. And for several years, we went to do excavations.”

A turning point

Years later, they believed “a little less” in these legends and had taken different paths, without losing sight of each other. First a French teacher then a literature researcher, Jacques Ravenne had turned to politics, while Éric Giacometti had a career in journalism all mapped out. After a series of articles he wrote that undermined Freemasonry, his old friend, himself a Freemason, decided to “enlighten” him on another facet of the brotherhood.

This is where they got the idea of ​​creating a Freemason police hero character, “who could allow the reader who is not a Freemason to see what happens in the lodge,” explains Éric Giacometti.

With the success of their novels, they quickly said goodbye to journalism and politics to write the kind of books they had always loved to read. Stories of mysteries and ancient legends, which seek to surprise readers and take them out of their comfort zone, according to the former journalist.

In The key and the crosswe find ourselves on one side in 1809, in Napoleon’s entourage, at the time when he imprisoned the Pope; on the other, we follow in our day the quest of the policeman Antoine Marcas on the trail of a mysterious ancestor, Tristan Marcas, who will lead him to the Park of Monsters, not far from Rome, while a rich fashion magnate dies in suspicious circumstances.

More than 80% of the historical facts are true in the part about Napoleon, Jacques Ravenne claims. And if he is the history buff, while Eric Giacometti rather likes to insert technological or scientific references in the contemporary part of the novel, both write in parallel on the two narrative lines that they choose for each novel, then exchange the texts in order to limit the variations in style and adapt the evolution of the characters.

In each of their novels with Antoine Marcas (they also have a series with Tristan Marcas during the Second World War), the enigma varies, but Antoine’s quest remains, each time revealing to us a new piece of the puzzle concerning his ancestor.

“What we always try to do is introduce readers to places or stories that are little known, but that have left their mark on us,” he adds. “Unusual places and stories that they discover during their travels, as was the case in Quebec.

And without wanting to reveal more, they assure us that they have already found material for more than one novel during their discovery of La Belle Province, which should sooner or later become the setting for a new plot. To be continued.

The key and the cross

Eric Giacometti and Jacques Ravenne

JC Lattes

450 pages