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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 843.912
EAN num: 9780143104841
ISBN number: 0143104845
Label: Penguin Classics
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 320
Printing Date: December 26, 2006
Publishing house: Penguin Classics
Sale Popularity Level: 325568
Studio: Penguin Classics
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“One episode simply melts away as the subsequent takes over” (The New York Times) in this deliciously sinister turn-of-the-century tale of a French evil genius run rampant. Three appalling crimes leave all of Paris aghast: the Marquise de Langruen is hacked to death, the Princess Sonia is robbed, and Lord Beltham is found dead, stuffed into a trunk. Inspector Juve knows that all the clues point to one suspect: the master of disguise, Fantômas. Juve cleverly pursues him in speeding trains, down dark alleys, through glittering Parisian salons, obsessed with bringing the demon mastermind to justice. As thrilling to read now as it was when very first published in 1915, Fantômas “is not a puzzle but an intoxicant” (The Village Voice).
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Rated by buyers 
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Is Fantomas, the novel, a work of imaginative genius? Or is it a work which captured and ignited the fire of the elites of Paris when it was very first published. In other words: a work of brilliance only conjured through the elites' imagination.
It is difficult to tell. Two writers,--one novel and a seemingly confusing plot that may or may not be confusion premediated. Perhaps accident, since the writing was so hurried and the writers alternated their talents between chapters. Or so the story goes.
But the Ultimate Question is: Who is Fantomas really.
Since I know of no yellowed-fading note left by Souvestre or Allain stating their intended purpose, I can only go on the evidence provided. And then make a reasonable conclusion. I think Inspector Juve would approve.
All the answers concerning what Souvestre and Allain INITIALLY had in mind can be found in the very first novel. This is excellent, as we are unlikely to ever see all 31 novels translated into English. Unless, of course, ten million people buy this reprint of the Bretano Edition of decades past. By the number of reviews: highly unlikely.
But we do have the very first 5 in paperback reprint. Number 6 you shall have to pay the bucks for, unless Amazon includes it and Number 7 to its list of reprints under the CreateSpace logo. Number 8: "The Daughter of Fantomas" is the very first new translation to English of a Fantomas novel in around 90 years. BlackCoat Press has done this.
But again: The Key to the whole "mystery" can be reasonably solved by a careful reading of the very first book. To my own self, I am satisfied with my conclusions. The subsequent novels, added to this one, are a series of greater and greater horrors like silt collecting in a river,--a common signature of pulps. And a signature which can make the writers lose their way; and thus, lose their original idea. One book a month for thirty-two months? No wonder the stories made less and less sense.
The bottom line is basically straightforward,--at least for me. Straightforward down a winding path:)
Gurn is a red-herring. He is by all standards a competent and cunning thief and ultimately a murderer. But his motive is not a Fantomas nihilistic one. His motive is love for the Lady Beltham. He kills her husband in self-defense. He tries to cover it up; that fails then he takes the blame and hits the road, hiding in shadowy rat-holes. He's a soldier, so he is clever enough to cover up how he murdered Beltham; but not so clever to send him on his "travels" to destinations unknown. Gurn could have dispatched the corpse of Beltham in a matter of days. Why so long a wait between death and disposal. Why the drug to prevent decay of the corpse. I am not really sure Gurn used the drug to prevent decay; but we shall give him that bit of cleverness. Then he risks everything by coming to see Lady Beltham. He is so clever, he's been watched for two days by? That is correct: Juve! They are just waiting for him. Gurn's imprisoned, has a chance for escape, then we are supposed to believe he goes to commit another murder and then he returns for what? An alibi?!
Non-sensical. The evidence wasn't even worth killing over. And why return. One murder is enough to get your head displaced by the guillotine. Gurn's explanation that his very first endeavor at escape failed is the one that rings true. Gurn is even described in the book as not being really very clever in the disguise department. Only Juve and Fandor seem to possess such great abilities.
So what are we left with? The very enigmatic and bizarre Inspector Juve. Juve craves excitement: "Plenty of cases but nothing spectacular . . ."
Juve even dismisses the commonplace robberies at the hotel as not being Fantomas,--at first. Later he changes his mind; and blows smoke all over the case in court with incoherent theories even the judge has to dismiss with dismay. The wonderful Juve appears to work against himself at the most inopportune times. He aids the idea of Fantomas; and fuels it without much proof.
He shields Charles Rambert (Fandor: whose name Juve invents as a take-off on "Fantomas") and lies about him. He breaks the law in numerous ways; and strangely Juve is the one with the most mobility and ability to commit the crimes by "the mysterious man" in the shadows. Juve in one section knows things that one wonders how he knows something that only Fantomas would know. Again, I stress Juve complains of boredom at the rash of mundane criminal activity. His constant obsession with Fantomas begins to infect his collegues, so that even they see him around every bit of outrageous or inexplicable evil. Even the mundane evil of robbery.
Fantomas in the very very first chapter comes off as an urban legend. I believe Gurn uses the name of Fantomas to commit a mundane, though desperate crime (the hotel robbery mentioned above). But Fantomas himself? The murderer of Marquise ... Read More
Rated by buyers 
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Often praised by horror fans, and I can understand that, as there's much that's horrific here. The typical villain/hero dynamic is broadened and transmorgrified to be something almost beyond sense -- characters shift, disguise themselves, seemingly change their very nature. It should absolutely fail, it should make no sense whatsoever, but the wonder and the beauty of FANTOMAS, a pulp novel written serially, is that it suggests a terrifying sort of sense by its close, it hints and implies a horrible truth that we dare not utter.
Yes, a scholarly edition of this would've been nice, but unlike some popular French novels of this period (I'm thinking of THE MYSTERY OF THE YELLOW ROOM, in particular) it's pretty approachable.
Rated by buyers -
I'm always on the lookout for a good read, and I especially love authors of the early decades of the 20th century - Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, C. L. Moore, H. P. Lovecraft, and so on. Pulp literature is always a treat: breackneck pacing, action, adventure, and suspense. Thus, when this little gem popped up as a suggestion for me, I decided to take a chance.
I wasn't disappointed.
Fantomas is a tale of a master criminal in turn-of-the-century Paris and the intrepid detective, Juve, who is obsessed with his capture. Fantomas - a master of disguise, a man without scruple, who may not, in fact, exist at all. When a series of sensational crimes strike the creme of Paris society - everything from simple jewel thievery to murder - Juve suspects the enigmatical, ghostlike Fantomas. The book weaves a breathless tangle of heinous crime, brilliant deduction, wrongful accusation, tragedy, hope, and, indeed, mighty suspense. The final two chapters will literally have you on the edge of your seat - and the ending is a classic.
The Good: Fantomas is a quick and engaging read. Inspector Juve owes much to Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes both in demeanor and virtuosity, but the authors succeed in putting their own spin on him. Allain and Souvestre also, like Alexandre Dumas before them, do not shy away from some biting social satire: good portions of this book exhibit sendups of good Parisian society of the day, and at times can be quite entertaining. The enigma that is Fantomas - early on in the book a simple "phantom" of the imagination, it seems - by the end of the book becomes a hideous presence that overshadows the work and gives the reader a very palpable feeling of dread. The Fantomas concept is, essentially, equal parts Dr. Moriarity and Keyser Soze from The Usual Suspects.
The Bad: Not much really. The book is not without its purple, florid passages, but this simply marks it as a product of its time.
Highly recommended for lovers of pulp literature.
Rated by buyers -
The Parisian obsession with the myth of the superhuman anonymous criminal figure has a long history, going back to Eugène Sue's LES MYSTÈRES DES PARIS, Ponson du Terrail's Rocambole, Leroux's PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, and Louis Feuillade's LES VAMPIRES. One of its most exciting and deathless iterations was as Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre's Fantomas, who appeared in dozens of novel installments starting in 1911 and then an entire silent film serial helmed by Feuillade, and was the toast of the French surrealists. This Penguin edition is a reprint of the very first novel in the series, which introduces us to most of the key characters (the supervillain Fantomas, his mistress Lady Beltham, and his nemeses Inspector Juve and ace reporter Jerome Fandor. The novel is almost insanely exciting, with marquises being slaughtered, English lords strangled and their corpses stuffed in trunks, and Russian princesses robbed while taking their baths: at the end of the novel, we find confirmation that (as we had guessed) these are all due to the machinations of Fantomas, who is both everywhere and nowhere, who can anticipate every eventuality and whose crimes are almost fussy in their impossible natures. Not only does Fantomas disguise his identity multiple times in this novel but so do Juve and Fandor: young men become old men, men become women, tramps become police inspectors... nothing is as it seems, right to the very end. It's pure pulp but it's also great fun. This edition is unfortunately free of annotation (which would have been extremely helpful), and the twenty year-old introduction by John Ashbery speaks more to the entire series as a whole than to this particular novel within it.
Rated by buyers -
Fantômas is everywhere. He is a master killer, a criminal genius, capable of being in multiple places at once. He can pretend to be anyone - even female - or so the story goes. And there are many, many stories of Fantômas. He is the everyman killer.
Or so Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre, partners in writing, would have the reader believe when they created Fantômas, in 1911. A massive success, the two would go on to write thirty-one more Fantômas novels after the first, and when Souvestre died, Allain wrote eleven more. Parisian appetite for stories of Fantômas's dastardly deeds was insatiable, 'a work of popular fiction whose popularity cut across all social and cultural strata', says John Ashbery, who wrote the introduction to the Penguin Classic edition.
Fantômas was the very first novel in a series written by the Allain and Souvestre. It catapulted the genius criminal to stratospheric popularity, as well as all but creating the modern criminal novel. The plot revolves around the mysterious killer, of whom very little is known at the beginning - and, delightfully, even less is known at the end. Indeed, the antagonist throughout the novel may not even be Fantômas, one of the many strokes of genius in this novel.
Charles Rambert waits anxiously to meet his father, who he has not seen in many years. The evening before his father's arrival, Charles learns the story of Fantômas, a master criminal who may or may not exist, who may or may no longer be active as a killer. Excited by these stories, he sleeps poorly, and in the morning, after he has collected his father from the train station, it is revealed that the Marquise de Langruen has been brutally murdered. 'Mme. de Langrune's throat was almost entirely severed by the blade of some sharp instrument. The breadth and depth of the wound absolutely prove that it was not made with one stroke; the murderer must have gone amok and dealt several blows'. Suspicion is placed on the only logical shoulders - Charles.
Princess Sonia, 'not pretty but lovely', is bathing in a hotel room, alone. Suddenly a man grips her arm, covers her mouth with his hand. A conversation, witty, calm, urbane, intelligent, menacing, ensues. Sonia is robbed, the thief escapes. Later, Lord Beltham, missing and presumed dead, is found in the abandoned home of Gurn, a mysterious traveler not often seen at his home. More suspicion is piled on Charles' absent shoulders until he, too, is found murdered in a river, fished out of the water by a vagabond.
The man working on all of these cases is Juve, a single-minded, bloody-minded detective who has hunted Fantômas for years. 'There was not a single person who had not heard of Juve and his marvelous exploits, or who did not regard him as a kind of hero.' We do not learn much of Juve's personal life because we do not need to - it is sufficient to the novel that he is a man obsessed, driven to capture the most elusive of all prey.
The story is told at a number of locations around Paris. Often, we know less about what is happening than Juve, who seems always to be one step ahead of the reader, the other characters - but never Fantômas. A scene will develop with the slightest of links to the main arching story, but then a sudden twist and we are back firmly within the realm of Juve and Fantômas as they struggle to outwith the other. Allain and Souvestre manage to keep a tight rein on the plot in this manner, always curling the story back to its central conceit.
For a novel that deals with a shadowy murderer who may or may not exist, the ending is brilliant. We are left with a clear, defined killer and a clear, defined victory for Juve - but was the captured murderer really Fantômas? The final twist is shocking, touching and very sad. Tension mounts until it is almost unbearable, with the final pages allowing a number of further adventures - forty-two more, in fact.
Fantômas was written to a deadline, following a careful sequence decided beforehand by the two authors. It is important to remember that they went on to write nine more novels that year. That Fantômas is of such high quality is remarkable. I cannot personally vouch for the remaining forty odd novels, but the series certainly began on a high note. For fans of the crime/thriller genre, this novel is recommended to see where it all began. For fans of fine literature, this novel is recommended as an important novel in the progression from gothic to contemporary popular literature. Recommended for all, in other words.
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