Robert Dumont, "Le Manchot"
Created by Pierre Saurel (pseudonym of Pierre Daignault)
(1925 --)

Tabernacle! I can't believe I missed this eye, operating in my own backyard! Talk about your two solitudes!

ROBERT DUMONT is more commonly known as "Le Manchot," French for "the one-handed." He's a French-speaking Montreal private eye with a reputation for toughness and getting results, and also for being more than a little peculiar at times.

Originally a detective attached to the violent crimes squad of the Montreal Urban Community police, he lost the use of the left hand in an accident. He wanted to return to work, but his boss, Inspector Jules Bernier, refused to put him back on the street, instead confining him to clerical work .

Angry, but refusing to be defeated, Dumont took early retirement. And, working closely with experts at "l'institut de réadaptation de Montréal", he had an artificial hand made, a sophisticated and powerful prosthetic at least ten times as strong as a natural hand. Think of him as a Québecois Sarge Steel.

Not wishing to remain inactive, Dumont became a private detective, opening his own agency in downtown Montreal. Among his operatives are Michel Beaulac, his former partner on the force, Candine "Candy" Varin, a statuesque blonde who would have liked to become police and Serge Joubert, a young student working his way through university. But the agency' also offers its clients a complete security service. The majority of the guards are retired police officers.

Le Manchot appeared in a long string of very successful paperbacks written in French by Pierre Saurelis (real name Pierre Daignault), a very prolific Québecois writer. Born in Montreal, he studied for two years at Collège Saint-Ignace and then worked for a few years at city hall, before deciding to follow in the footsteps of his father, and become an actor. In 1949, he started his own theatre company, and directed it until 1962, averaging over 75 productions a year. He also began appearing regularly on radio and television, and became quite famous for his portrayal of the landlord Père Ovide (ti-père) in the very popular téléroman Les Belles Histoires Des Pays D'en Haut de Claude Henri Grignon.

Not content to rest on his laurels, he also became a pulp writer. In the spring of 1947, after several years of writing for radio, he proposed a serialized spy novel to the editor of Police Journal. In September of that year, the first of many Des Aventures étranges de l'agent IXE-13 appeared, relating the adventures of "the ace of the Canadian spies."

Encouraged by that success, Saurel, after taking a coorespondence course on writing mysteries, followed it up with several other popular series, including Les Aventures Policières d'Albert Brien, Détective national des Canadiens Français, Les Aventures de Cow-Boys, Les Exploits Policiers du Domino Noir and Diane la Belle Aventurière.

And in 1980, he created Le Manchot, which he churned out at a blistering pace until ill health forced hijm to retire in 1985. Today, Mr. Daignault is retired and living in Laval, a suburb of Montreal.

TRIVIA

NOVELS

RELATED LINKS

Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith (original report, April 2001).

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