A. Louise Staman

I may as well start with a warning and maybe add one or two later on. The Amazon review of A. Louise Staman's 'With the stroke of a pen' though finding her story fascinating gave her demerits for intruding herself into the story. What Staman does is reopen the investigation into the murder of one Robert Denoel on December 2, 1945. The initial reports of that event had Denoel at around 9 pm that night pulling his car over to change a flat tire--according to the testimony of his mistress Jeanne Loviton--a very rich and politically connected attorney--who had been in the car with Denoel and according to her had prior to the murder hoofed it to the local police station. As the book will show for anyone who cares to read it there are some very good reasons not to believe her.

Robert Denoel--the man behind Les editions Denoel--was a book publisher who became a major rival of Gaston Gallimard--the head of the most prestigious publishing company in France. Denoel at the time was one week away from a court date at which he intended to defend himself and his company from charges of collaborating with the Nazi's during the time of the German occupation in WWII. Denoel's intentions were not to dispute that he and his company had collaborated but instead to prove that in order to operate their businesses all French publishers had in one way or another collaborated in order to survive. So in preparing his defense Denoel had set about accruing evidence against the other French publishers. Denoel as well with the help of his mistress Loviton intended to fix the trial through bribery and Loviton had set up a meeting the night of the murder with two other attorney's connected both to the communist party and to high offices in the French govt. Unknown to Denoel however (their relationship had soured and Denoel was considering dropping divorce proceedings against his wife Cecile) Loviton and her associates intended to doublecross him.

What followed was not only the assassination of Denoel but the stealing away of Denoel's publishing company from his widow and a lengthy court battle in which the evidence points to Loviton buying the verdict. Loviton takes over control of the company and as it happens will later sell it off to Denoel's arch-rival Gallimard.

There is a wealth of background material. The rise of Denoel's company in the late 20's from virtually nothing to overnight success had at its origins sprung from Denoel's publishing Louis Ferdinand Celine's first novel 'Journey to the end of the night'. Other Denoel original authors included Antonin Artaud and Jean Genet. Celine was important though--his signing with Denoel enraged Gallimard who had been sitting on that book for some time to the frustration of its bad tempered author. To Gallimard Celine had been stolen away by Denoel and later on Gallimard gets some modicum of revenge by fixing the Goncourt jury so that Celine would not win that prize--something that Celine took personally and never forgot. The ensuing Goncourt scandal was great for sales but soured the relationship between the writer and Denoel--Celine concluding that all publishers were just crooks in business for one thing--money. Celine again is important to the book as prior to Germany's invading of France he had written two lengthy anti-semetic and at least somewhat friendly pro German pamphlets which Denoel published and made a lot of money on. These were two of the major works for which Denoel was charged with collaboration. In Celine's defense this almost always irrascible writer had a way of offending practically everyone. The German occupiers were to find out this for themselves and I've always marveled at how Celine managed to survive the war. He certainly didn't do it by keeping his mouth shut.

I liked the book quite a lot. It is a page turner. Being a huge Celine fan and if you've read any of his work he at times and especially in the trilogy of novels before his death about his WWII adventures will reference past and present events about one personality or another. Denoel's name would now and again appear such as in the first pages of 'Death on the Installment plan'. And Celine referenced Denoel's murder more than once in those last books. To say the least he has his suspicions and when this book came to my attention I was intrigued. Staman's book gives us a portrait of what life was like for publishers and to some respects other segments of French Society during the occupation--gives us also a look at some of the injustices that followed after that country's liberation.… (mehr)