Michel Bussi, Nadine Mousselet, Valentin Musso… How regional crime fiction conquered France
Decryption From the coves of Marseille to the beaches of Finistère, via the Massif Central, regional crime fiction is experiencing a new boom. A quest for authenticity or a cardboard setting? A tour de France of this publishing trend.
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"I must have been a dog in a previous life." Nadine Mousselet is not lacking in humor or previous lives. She was a teacher in Brussels, the wife of a Breton, a stay-at-home mother, a breeder of Labradors, before becoming, in 2006, the author of "Les Enquêtes de Laura Claes," a series of self-published detective novels that enjoyed local success. Local, but massive: 10,000 copies sold per title. Enough to command respect—and arouse envy. At 67, Nadine Mousselet is setting out to conquer France, joining Editions XO, while Pocket is reissuing in paperback some of her twenty-five novels, such as "Les Disparus de Tatihou" and its corpse "curled up in the spasms of death," or "Scalpées dans la Baie," of Mont-Saint-Michel, with its young woman pierced by an umbrella.
Laura Claes, her heroine, a criminologist, walks the autopsy rooms of a territory starting in northern Finistère and embracing the whole of Cotentin. So that "the locals can identify with it and not find any mistakes," she begins each plot with a phone call to the tourist office, has maps sent to her, and stays there. In Le Havre, for "Meurtres cousus main," her new work, she talks with the old people, soaks up the atmosphere...
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