MYSTERY

The Sleeping Car Murders

by Sébastien Japrisot
Gallic. Nov. 2021. 208p. tr. from French by Francis Price. ISBN 9781910477939. pap. $14.95. M
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The strangled corpse of Georgette Thomas is found drooping from her berth in the overnight train from Marseilles to Paris, after five adjacent passengers have alighted. For stolid detective Pierre “Grazzi” Grazziano it’s all in a day’s work (not much lightened by his preoccupied boss or inattentive flunky), but his investigative routine hits a snag when somebody starts killing the witnesses. In his 1962 crime debut, French novelist/screenwriter Japrisot (1931–2003) subverts the cool, just-the-facts surface of his prose with sudden dives into the psyches roiling beneath, delivering some exquisitely disorienting twists and shocks before the story settles into a more conventional whodunit. The 1965 film adaptation was Costa-Gavras’s directorial debut.
VERDICT Although not his best, this swift French New Wave spin on the police procedural exhibits much of the deft narrative legerdemain that Japrisot would perfect in four subsequent award-winning crime novels, all recently reissued by Gallic Books, and all good bets wherever Georges Simenon is popular.
Reviewed by David Wright , Nov 01, 2021
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