Euro Noir by Barry Forshaw

Author:Barry Forshaw
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781843442462
Publisher: Oldcastle Books
Published: 2014-04-23T16:00:00+00:00

Saving the World

When a writer dies too young one remembers conversations – never to be repeated. I learnt the following when talking to the writer around the time of the UK issue of Chez Max – and now wish I’d spent more time talking to him. I asked Arjouni about inspirations. ‘Well, frankly, I was inspired by some very diverse writers,’ he told me. ‘Dashiell Hammett, Georg Büchner, Heinrich Heine, Victor Hugo, William Faulkner, Guy de Maupassant, Eric Ambler, Samuel Beckett. Eclectic enough for you?’ he said, smiling. However for Chez Max, he had two specific inspirations. ‘For that book, it was Mark Twain and Jim Thompson. How about that for an ill-matched duo?’

‘However, I am not a crime reader or, for that matter, a crime writer. I read books I like or love and sometimes these are crime stories. (For example, I consider Charles Willeford indispensable.) As a writer, if I think the story or a character I want to write about works best in the frame of a crime story, then this is the frame I use.’ I asked how Arjouni felt a modern writer should tackle the thorny subject of sex. ‘Hmmm… regarding sex and sexuality… I don’t know what a contemporary writer should do or should not do. But as a writer you always try to find truth, don’t you? Sometimes you find it with frankness, sometimes with discretion. I don’t think that there are any simple rules to follow… with every page, every scene you have to find the words that work for this particular page or scene. During the actual work of writing, I work only for myself, not some notional reader. Writing is, de facto, communication. First, communication with myself and then, in a less direct way, communication with the world.’

He continued: ‘Chez Max plays in the future, 2064, in Paris. The planet is divided into the first and the second world, rich and poor, separated by a wall. The first world is democratic; people ride around on bicycles and eat good food. The second world is shadier, because the story is told from the wealthy perspective, but we hear about fanaticism, civil wars, dictators, terrorism, etc. The protagonist, Max Schwarzwald, lives in Paris, owns a gourmet restaurant and works part time for a government secret service. The principle of the service is: stop the criminals before they can execute their crimes. Max’s partner in the secret service is Chen Wu, who (Max decides) is an arrogant, mean-spirited bigmouth. Max begins to suspect that Chen is helping illegal immigrants from the second world to come over the wall. Is Chen a member of a second world movement, some political underground party, perhaps even a terrorist group? So Max has to take things into his own hands… he has to save the world.’

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