2023-09-20 14:41:37
The novelist was close to the British John Harvey who introduced him to Rivages. His books are distinguished by the realism of the investigations and the ambiguity of his characters.
The news reaches us late and furtively. The Welshman Bill James, author of numerous thrillers, sixteen of which were published by Rivages, died on June 17 at the age of 94. To forget it would be an injustice because since Retour après la nuit, his first book published in French in 1998, fans of careful investigations carried out by stubborn cops, with an elegant dose of humor, have celebrated his detective novels where cops cross paths and thugs. There we find an improbable duo, the friendly and sentimental Colin Harpur with the pretentious Desmond Iles, an unbearable lesson giver. The main qualities of Bill James are not only the realism of investigations and daily police life, but the ambiguity of his characters often placed before cases of conscience.
Real name Allan James Tucker, this former journalist and then teacher wrote a lot and under pseudonyms (David Craig, Bill James). He excelled in describing his field cops on a daily basis. This is the case in Lolita Man (2000) or Question of Ethics (2011) for example where the tone is grating, the dialogues sparkling and the construction always renewed.
Bill James no longer came to France in recent years. Tired, he had stopped writing but you only need to delve into one of his novels from Rivages/Noir to appreciate the mischief and intellectual youth of this author. Bill James was close to John Harvey, a remarkable British author, and it was Harvey who, in 1998, introduced his colleague to François Guérif, then literary director at Rivages. Today, Bill James died, John Harvey said goodbye to his heroes, Charles Resnick and Frank Elder. All that remains are their books, still available.
#Death #thriller #author #Bill #James #Libération