The Author

1960: Fiat lux.
1967/68: By the end of the school year, a substitute teacher reads aloud Robinson Crusoe, it’s an immediate revelation: “I want to write”.
May 1968: No barricades, nor riots in Montréjeau, Haute-Garonne.
1969: Invent a game for the school playground called “the crawler”: immediate success.
1970: Reading of Bob Morane, Tintin, the Yellow M, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Jules Verne, Lucky Luke, The Katzenjammer Kids, first comics, first texts.
1974: San Antonio, The Great Meaulnes, H.G. Wells.
1976: Isaac Asimov, Philippe Druillet, Moebius, Philippe K. Dick, Conan Doyle, Charlie Hebdo. Kill my first victim (made of paper).
1979/1980: First rock concert: ACDC at Muret, Toulouse’s suburbs, with Bon Scott.
1981: Like Diogenes inside his barrel, observe with caution the popular jubilation, having read Camus, Pasolini and some other. Read William Styron, Grass, Thomas Bernhard.
1982: Inside my bags, already tens of texts typed on the writing machine, go to Spain in a Kerouac-style: sex, drugs & San Miguel. I never totally recovered from it. Read Camilo José, Cela, Sabato, Ortega y Gasset, Neruda, Cervantes.
1984: Turn up in Paris. Read John Le Carré, Ellroy and Liberman. Join the Customs.
2011: publication of The Frozen Dead. Another life begins…
2016 : Invited to Oxford for a black tie gala dinner, I arrive in jeans and go in search of a dinner jacket accompanied by my English publisher.
2017 : Filming of Glacé (Iced) in the Pyrenees.
2018 : I am described as “Il più grande giallista europeo”  by Il Fatto Quotidiano : I like the Italian press very much.
I am described as  “nuevo rey del thriller” by El País : I like the Spanish press very much.
2019 : Publication of M, the Edge of the Abyss.
2020 : A year of lack & lock  : no face-to-face meetings with the readers, no flights, no airports, no festivals, no book fairs, a year as eco-friendly and joyful as a shut down dark house.
2020 : Rediscover (at random) Musil (because his books are thick), Proust( because his books are thick), Joyce (because his books are thick), Günter Grass (because…), The Human Comedy (you will have guessed), Pierre Michon (because his texts are short…).
2020 : Re-listen on a loop  to  Morrissey, who ages badly but still sounds great.
2021 : Put down the masks ?