Pierre Lemaitre's Books

Biography

Pierre Lemaitre was born in 1951 and grew up in Aubervilliers, a suburb of Paris. A graduate in Psychology, he spent the formative years of his career teaching French and American literature to librarians.

“In order to teach these librarians, I had to study closely the structure of novels, narrative techniques, points of view and so on.” (Crime Fiction Lover)

From Teaching to Doing

After teaching for thirty years, Lemaitre could claim to be a literary expert, but it is one thing to teach and another thing to do. So, in his mid-fifties, he published his first thriller Travail soigné. In it, he describes the case of a serial killer who murders women, copying scenes from classic crime novels and films including The Blue Dahlia and American Psycho. The story achieved critical acclaim, winning him the Cognac First Novel Award and was published in English eight years later as Irene. It was the first novel in his Camille Verhœven trilogy (also known as the Paris Crime Files). The series culminated three books later with Camille. It isn’t normal for a trilogy to have four parts, (Alex, Irène, Camille, then another novella — Rosy and John) but Lemaitre is unapologetic, citing one of his literary heroes Alexander Dumas in his defence.

“The trilogy pays homage to The Three Musketeers, of which there were actually four, and relates the story of a man involved in the fates of three women (and in the end, four).” (The Strand Magazine)

Inspirations

Lemaitre quickly admits that other authors have influenced him and points out that nothing comes from nothing. At the end of his novel Three Days and a Life, he penned a section entitled Gratitude.

“I readily recognise myself in H. G. Wells’ comment in his preface to Dolores: “One takes a trait from this one, a trait from that other; one borrows it from a lifelong friend, or from someone one has just glimpsed on a station platform, waiting for a train. Sometimes you even borrow a sentence, an idea from a newspaper story. This is the way to write a novel; there is no other way.” (Lettres It Be)

Stepping up the Pace

After the Paris Crime Files’ success, Lemaitre wrote the “Les Enfants du Désastre” trilogy. The first of these, Au revoir là-haut (The Great Swindle), is part criminal caper and part picaresque novel. It catapulted Lemaitre from mere success as a crime writer to literary greatness, winning him the Prix Goncourt, the best-known and most prestigious French prize for literature.

“There are only three events that can change your life in a fraction of a second: love at first sight, a heart attack and the Goncourt Prize. The first is the most mysterious, the second the most fatal; the third is unclassifiable… For most of the writers who receive it, it is an absolutely considerable change of status. In France, the Prix Goncourt is not really a literary prize: it is a symbol, an emblem. Receiving it changes… just about everything in your life: the way you envisage the rest of your work, the meetings you have, the proposals you receive… just about everything.” (Lettres It Be)

Despite this accolade, Lemaitre has not turned his back on noir. Three Days and a Life tells the story of a twelve-year-old assassin, and Blood Wedding is a Hitchcockian thriller in which a woman wakes up to find that she has strangled a child with her bootlaces yet can’t remember a thing about it.

Too Brutal for His Own Good?

Pierre Lemaitre’s books are vividly descriptive. Critics accuse him of being too graphic in the accounts of the crimes he portrays, but again he is quick to defend himself.

“I’m often reproached for showing too much violence in my books, and this is something that I always find puzzling and somewhat amusing. Obviously, a reader of crime fiction expects a violent death or two; otherwise, they would probably buy a romance or a book from another genre. So, just how much horror is an acceptable dose? A genteel little bit, but not too much? It does sound rather hypocritical to establish hard and fast rules about that.” (Crime Fiction Lover)

When discussing crime fiction, Lemaitre demonstrates his knowledge of the genre.

“Crime fiction is the only literary genre that is judged entirely by the ending. You can read an extraordinary book and be carried all the way through it and come to a disappointing ending and think, “that wasn’t really worth reading”. On the other hand, you could have read an entirely mediocre book, then read an extraordinary ending and think “my god that was a great read”. The ending of the story changes your view of the entire novel.” (Audible)

Advice for Aspiring Authors

So the wise old man of French crime literature has some very sound advice for would-be writers:

“Take great care with your beginning because that is what hooks readers in the first place. Take great care with the ending because that is the memory they will have of the book when they put it down. It doesn’t matter what you do in the middle as it won’t make any difference at all.” (Audible)

Though he ruefully admits that if they follow his advice, they will write awful books, and he won’t have any competition. Just because somebody is a recognised expert in their field doesn’t mean you should hang on to every word they say.

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