What if this new book, in which Rédoine Faïd recounts his twelve years of detention, became a film one day? In "Spirale", which comes out this Thursday, November 2 by JC Lattès, the inmate has put everything that Hollywood loves: spectacular escapes, robberies, prison, cops, thugs, friendship stories and even a love story. His life, that is.
The story ends at the dawn of his escape by helicopter from the Réau power plant (Seine-et-Marne) in July 2018, whose trial ended on October 25 with a new prison sentence for the "king of beauty". That this thug's life will one day be brought to the screen is, in any case, not implausible, contacts with an American screenwriter are ongoing, even if nothing has been definitively decided yet.
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For the time being, the detainee is focused on publishing this account, initially 1,000 pages written by Faïd in his cell, which his editor Clara Dupont-Monod cut in half and "rewritten". "Very little rescription," says the woman who regularly exchanges with this rather peculiar author whom she meets in the visiting room, without paper or pencil.
The Man Behind the Robber
"Spiral" is a book as breathless as an action feature. It's also built like a puzzle with a splintered timeline and incessant flashbacks. The prison is central, described from the inside, as it is, dark, ugly, cruel. Sickness and death prowl like vultures. A prison book.
But that's not all. Rédoine Faïd also talks about himself. The one that the general public, journalists and cops don't know: the man behind the robber, with his flaws, his contradictions, his unspoken family words and this impossible love for a high school friend, Eva, for whom he went to live one day in Israel, a love that, deep down, reminds him that he took the wrong road. "Spirale" is the book of a thug who puts his guts in the air by wielding the pen rather than the explosive.
"Spirale", by Rédoine Faïd, published by Jean-Claude Lattès, €23.90, out in bookstores on November 2