Forgotten Book - The Jackals

The Jackals, by Frederic Valmain, is a pretty obscure title dating from 1962, and it certainly qualifies for inclusion in Patti Abbott’s series of forgotten books for Friday. After I discovered a copy at Hay-on-Wye recently, I blogged about the rather mysterious author and it seems as though the Valmain name was a pseudonym.
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His novel takes a well-worn theme, and tackles it with pace and verve. A young doctor, Christophe Chalvet, takes up a job in the coastal town of Tizgert-sur-Mer. He hears about Angelo Falcone, a wealthy recluse with a gorgeous wife who lives in a Chinese house in the town, and when one day he saves a beautiful woman from drowning, he discovers that she is Lorenza Falcone. He falls head over heels for her, and soon they become lovers.

Lorenza confides in him that she is terrified of her disabled, yet menacing husband. He has a criminal past, and abuses her dreadfully. The only servant in the Chinese house is a mute negro, and a young man visits each week to deliver drugs to Lorenza’s husband. How can she escape her grim life? The only viable solution, it seems, is murder. The pattern of the story is thus along the lines of classics such as Double Indemnity. But Valmain’s spare prose packs a considerable punch, and the story gains a great deal from its evocative backdrop, in a country on the brink of revolution.

I enjoyed this book very much. The style reminded me of that splendid writing duo Boileau and Narcejac, and if this is an indication of the quality of his work, I’m surprised that Valmain has slipped so completely from view.

Who Was Frederic Valmain?

One of the books I discovered in Hay-on-Wye was a novel I’d never heard of, by a writer unknown to me. But a glance at the back cover was enough to cause me to buy it. It was a paperback from 1965, a novel by Frederic Valmain called The Jackals (this copy does not disclose the original French title.)

The front cover bears an encomium from James Hadley Chase: ‘A book I can recommend for those who are looking for something new in suspense.’ Now, I’ve never read anything by Chase, and I’m not sure his work would appeal to me, but the back cover account of the plot – a young doctor is seduced by a woman who wants rid of her monstrous husband – suggests a story in the mould of some of the French novelists of suspense who worked at the same time as Valmain, and whom I admire: Boileau and Narcejac, Hubert Monteilhet, and Catherine Arley.

But who was the author? Initial researches have failed to reveal much, though Valmain obviously produced quite a lot of work, and some of it seems to have been filmed or televised. At least one internet site refers to him as a playwright. I consulted that great expert Xavier Lechard, but even Xavier didn’t know anything about Valmain. He told me that there was a belief that Valmain’s name was a pseudonym for a writer called Frederic Dard. But Valmain confounded that theory by giving an interview after Dard’s death. As Xavier said: ‘Valmain, as you can see, is thus a mystery writer in all meanings of the term.’

So do any of my knowledgable readers know anything about Valmain, or his work?