Pierre Lemaitre confesses his passions (and some phobias) about crime fiction

Pierre Lemaitre (Paris, 70 years old) is clear about it and does not want to leave room for doubt: "Lovers of rigorous definitions, exhaustive monographs, thematic analyses, etc., will be disappointed (luckily, they have other excellent works meet your expectations), but the publisher commissioned this dictionary from a writer, so I will speak in it as a novelist and as a reader.”

Rarely is a declaration of intent made in the introduction or the prologue fulfilled as strictly as in the

(Salamander, translation by José Antonio Soriano).

The result?

Passionate, irregular, magnificent, with clamorous absences and extraordinary discoveries, advice, controversies (what a good verbal fencer Lemaitre is)... a personal commitment to a genre that he loves and that has given me long and suggestive reading times.

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The way to read a thematic dictionary depends on each one.

I always start at the end, in absolute chaos, searching hard for the first names I want to read.

From there I go to another and another, either guided by the suggestions at the end of each entry (the

delirious , for example, which leads us to

) or because it is the next entry and I feel like it.

And, if not, return to the name index with a single rule: reading in order is prohibited.

Lemaitre can't stand James Ellroy, but he admires him as a novelist, and that's what we've come here for, so he devotes one of his longest and most prolific entries to him.

Because of my manifest weaknesses, I continued with David Peace,

, Javert, Fred Vargas, Simenon (whom he calls The Eternal),

, and more.

The space dedicated to Laidlaw ends with a paragraph that gives an idea of ​​how this passionate dictionary is written:

“When I ran into McIlvanney at a festival in Bristol, I went over to shake his hand and burst into tears too.

He, a thin man with blue eyes and an angular face, looked at me worriedly and suggested that I sit down.

I must have looked like an unbalanced reader capable of sticking a knife in his stomach, but he sat down next to me and we chatted in the empty room of the big hotel.

He was so much like Laidlaw that I couldn't contain my emotion: author and character were fused in my mind, as Proust and Swann had once been.

McIlvanney died in December 2015 and I was in tears again."

James Ellroy in February 2018 in Barcelona, ​​where he received the Pepe Carvalho Award from BCNegra.Carles Ribas

You see that in this work there is room for authors as well as movies or characters.

Also small spaces dedicated to the genre itself, delightful in their transgressive will and sincerity.

,

,

,

… are some of the titles of those little artifacts stuck in the middle of a constant and agile exercise of erudition.

Are there Spanish?

More than one will be wondering.

There are, but few.

An entry on Arturo Pérez-Reverte (for a non-black novel, but you know, here the author is the dictator);

another on A million drops, by Víctor del Arbol, which once again proves the success of the author in France and, finally, the one dedicated to Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, considered by the French author to be a master.

It is, in short, a book that can be read on many levels, but in which even the most expert will find surprises.

A personal commitment from one of the best genre authors in Europe in recent decades but, even more, from an exquisite reader and, like any true reader, passionate.

Come, read and enjoy.

This time, more than ever,