King of Fools

Frédéric Dard (1921-2000) was one of the best known and loved French crime writers of the twentieth century. Enormously prolific, he wrote more than three hundred thrillers, suspense stories, plays and screenplays, under a variety of noms de plume, throughout his long and illustrious career, which also saw him win the 1957 Grand prix de littérature policière for The Executioner Weeps, forthcoming from Pushkin Vertigo. Dard's Bird in a Cage, The Wicked Go to Hell, Crush and the The Gravediggers' Bread are also available or forthcoming from Pushkin Vertigo.

The French master of noir The Observer Alongside the Maigret novels of Georges Simenon there is a rich vein of period French crime still to be tapped. Frederic Dard is a case in point Daily Mail At heart, The King of Fools is another Dard Noir Romance, a book about a love story gone bad, which is charming and engaging far beyond the plot details International Crime Fiction The literary descendant of Simenon and Celine Le Figaro No question: for me, he was the greatest Philippe Geluck France's most popular post-war author L'Express His language is cutting, his point-of-view original and his verdict uncompromising... One of the few twentieth-century authors to win both critical acclaim and great popularity Solidarite Militaire