Nestor Burma
Created by Léo Malet

Mesdames et messieurs, ladies and gentlemen, may we introduce to you France's answer to Chandler's Marlowe, the one and only, NESTOR BURMA -- detective de choc!

Malet was heavily influenced by Chandler, Hammett, et al, and Burma's appearance ushered in a whole new era in French detective fiction. But Burma is more than just Marlowe in a beret. A former anarchist, with roots in radical politics, Nestor lives a precarious existence in a time and a place that few have dared to touch -- namely, France during and just after World War II. Nestor is the owner and sole operator of the Fiat Lux Detective Agency in Paris, in a France very much under the thumb of the Nazis and the Vichy regime. And Marlowe thought Bay City was bad.

The only other employee at Fiat Lux is Nestor's long-suffering, starry-eyed secretary, Hélène, who's got it bad for the boss. Other supporting characters include Zavatter, an allegedly-reformed burglar, who sometimes helps out Burma, Police Commissioner Faroux, who begrudgingly admits Burma's a pretty decent detective, and Faroux's assistant, Inspector Fabre, who doesn't trust Burma any farther than he can throw him.

Burma appeared in almost thirty novels, including an interesting series within a series called "les Nouveaux Mysteres de Paris," comprising fifteen novels, each one devoted to a Paris district.

Nestor's popularity and influence have gone far beyond the original novels. There have been at least three films and, in the nineties, a television series. The show ran for from 1991 untl somewhere around 2000, which ought to indicate how well-thought of the character is in France.

More recently, comics artist Jacques Tardi (alone and with fellow cartoonist Emmanuel Moynot) has begun adapting the novels into some very well done graphic novels, and has even occasionally written some original Burma stories.

And if your French isn't up to snuff, in the nineties, Britain's Pan began releasing English translations of several of the books in the nineties. They're worth tracking down.

One of the most influential detective writers in France, Léo Malet was born in 1909 and lived a rather colourful life. Like Burma, he was a reformed left-wing idealist and anarchist. He was a published poet, a "chansonnier" in nightclubs in Montmartre, a reporter for a number of radical papers, and a member of the notorious Surrealist Group from 1930 to 1949. His first detective novel, 120, Rue de la Gare, was published in 1943 and by 1948, he had France's prestigious Grand Prix de Littérature Policière. The Nestor Burma is one of to the longest-running PI series of all time, with twenty-nine books and several short stories spanning almost fifty years. Somehow, Malet (under the pseudonym of Frank Harding) also found the time to create another French character, reporter Johnny Metal, who often acted like a PI.When Malet passed away in 1996, his beloved character Nestor Burma was honored by a French stamp.

BURMA AT THE MOVIES AND ON TELEVISION
A Brief Overview by Etienne Borgers

NOVELS

SHORT STORIES

FILMS

TELEVISION

GRAPHIC NOVELS

ALSO OF INTEREST

RELATED LINKS

Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith. Et un gros merci à Jan Christian Schmidt, Antoine Boegli et Etienne Borgers de son aide.

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