On June 23, 1940, the day after France's defeat against Germany, Hitler visited Paris.
In the midst of World War II, at daybreak, the Nazi leader stops in front of the largest monuments of a deserted and now occupied capital, before leaving two hours later.
A small bicycle slipped in its wake.
On the handlebars, Inspector André Michel, investigator at the Paris police headquarters, witnessed, bewildered, Hitler's “walk” in conquered terrain.
This "flash visit" is true, but André Michel did not really exist, in any case elsewhere than in the imagination of the head of the Seine-Saint-Denis minors' brigade.
In "A cop in the mist" (Editions Sydney Laurent) the historical novel he has just released, Rémy Borel questions the role of the police in the face of great moments in history.
We follow the inspector grappling with his colleagues who collaborate or resist, we feel his loneliness and his dismay in the face of the decisions to be taken on a daily basis.
"The idea is to look history in the face"
“André Michel is a literary clone, it is me in my questions, summarizes the policeman.
I wouldn't have been a collaborator… I hope!
But I don't think I would have been resistant either.
It's a book on the harshness of history.
In those times, I feel like you have to be a super bastard or a superhero.
There is no room for normal guys.
"Rémy Borel explains that he is not in" a desire for repentance ":" The idea is to look history in the face and when I look, I see that between 1940 and 1945, the French police operated.
"
Because “between knowing history and writing a book on everyday life, there is a chasm”, the former student in contemporary history at La Sorbonne has documented himself at length.
“My main concern was not to be anachronistic.
"
The non-specialist reader will discover how “BS2” operated, ie the specialized brigade responsible for tracking down enemies “from within”. By meeting Michelle, the female heroine of "A cop in the mist", he will learn that the first women to work at the police headquarters could not have the status of police officer but only that of "police assistant. ". Finally, most of the many thugs sought after by André Michel really existed, such as the bank robber Émile Buisson or the murderer Pierre Loutrel, a member of the Gestapo, better known by the nickname Pierrot-le-fou.
For the accuracy of his account, Rémy Borel was able to count on the wise rereading of Jean-Marc Berlière, a specialist in the history of the police in France: “He made very good use of the archives and what we know about the very particular situation of the Parisian judicial police under the occupation, wedged between the demands of the occupier, the law and the
French Gestapo-
type pharmacies
”, moreover boasts the historian.