Patrick Raynal

About

Born in Paris on the first of July 1946 Patrick Raynal had chaotic school years in the South-West and South-East of France. From 1967 to 1972, he was very active for the French Communist Party, the French Communist Youth Union (UJCML) and the Gauche Prolétarienne (French Maoist political party). After a master in French Literature in 1970, he was forced out of Nice university after a 6-month suspended prison sentence. Then he married and did his military service in the Chasseurs Alpins (élite mountain infantry). Odd jobs and hard times…He spent two years in Brittany before going back to the French Riviera where he worked as a general insurance agent in La-Colle-sur-Loup. He started writing crime fiction novels in 1980. He also contributed as a literary columnist to the Monde des Livres and to Nice Matin for several years

He succeeded Robert Soulat as director of Gallimard’s Série Noire from 1991 à 2005. He created the ‘La Noire’ collection, broadening the scope of a literature characterised by a gloomy vision of the world, and that goes beyond the traditional detective novel genre. He then joined the Éditions Fayard as editor of the Fayard Noir collection. He also cosigned with Jean-Bernard Pouy the script of Le Poulpe in 1998. In October 2012, after several years of silence, he published Au service secret de Sa sainteté at L’Écailler.

Autobiograpy for Quais du Polar

“Born in Paris on the first of July 1946. I’ve successively been a dunce, a Maoist, a graduate in literature, a convict (one month only), a Chasseur Alpin (12 long months), an insurer (18 years), a crime fiction writer (still), a literary columnist, director of Gallimard’s Série Noire (14 years), director of Fayard Noir (4 years), lecturer at Paris School of Political Science (Sciences Po), translator and free-lance publisher (now)”.

Crime favourites

Film: Touch of Evil, directed by Orson Welles

Book: The Long Goodbye, by Raymond Chandler

Author: Chandler or Simenon according to mood.

Title