Novel
L'Assassin habite au 21
Not translated into English
Stanislas-André Steeman · 1939
Synopsis
London, winter 1938-1939. A murderer has already killed seven people in the fog, with a blow to the head, and each time leaves a calling card in the name of Mr Smith. A small-time trafficker, witness to a murder, says he followed him to 21 Russell Square, the house Mrs Hobson keeps for her lodgers. Superintendent Strickland of Scotland Yard has the house watched and places there a French professor to observe the boarders: the culprit can only be one of them.
Context
The author wrote the novel at home, in Ixelles, at number 21 of a square, and published it in 1939 in the Le Masque series. The investigation there is conducted by Strickland: it is the film that Henri-Georges Clouzot made from it in 1942 that moved the plot to Paris and gave it to Monsieur Wens, the detective of other novels by the author. The adaptation caused a falling-out between the novelist and the filmmaker over fidelity to the book. The novel was later adapted as a comic, along with three others by the author.
Who it is for
A short detective novel, a puzzle mystery, in which the culprit hides among about ten boarders; still reissued in paperback.
Prizes and reception
Its author's most famous novel according to the Dictionnaire des Wallons, and the best known through Clouzot's film.
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