French crime stories for learners

What French does a crime story teach?

The language of alibis and interrogations. An alibi is a short account of the past, so suspects talk in the passé composé, the tense of spoken French, while the narrator around them often uses the written passé simple. Both sit in one line when a retired schoolteacher questions the antique dealer travelling in her carriage about her missing brooch:

Then come the questions, and detectives use the formal, inverted kind. Later she turns to the train conductor: Et vous, monsieur le contrôleur, où étiez-vous entre Lyon et Avignon ? And you, where were you between Lyon and Avignon? The verb comes before vous, as it does in nearly every interrogation in these series.

At A1 the investigation is plainer but works the same way. Madeleine, a retired concierge, keeps a notebook of the laundry-room thefts, and her first entry is three words long: Lundi. Foulard rouge. Disparu. Monday, red scarf, gone.

Which crime words come up again and again?

A small set of words carries almost every case, and all of these appear in the free chapters:

• le vol, volertheft, to steal
• le voleurthief
• l'enquête, enquêterinvestigation, to investigate
• l'alibialibi
• le suspectsuspect
• le témoignagewitness statement
• un fauxa forgery, a fake
• porter plainteto report a crime, to press charges

One trap: voler means both "to steal" and "to fly", and le vol is both a theft and a flight. In a crime story the context settles it at once, but it is worth knowing before you meet a vol in a travel article.

Note too how French denies things: ne... rien, wrapped round the verb. When a retired accountant asks his young neighbour about a wallet, the answer comes far too fast: Non, non, je ne sais rien! In these stories, a je ne sais rien said that quickly usually means the opposite.

Which French crime story should I start with?

• A1: Le Lundi des Petits Mystères, socks and scarves vanishing from a building's laundry room, or Le Portefeuille de Monsieur Leclerc, a lost wallet that comes back with extra money and an unsigned thank-you note.
• A2: Madame Leclerc Enquête, a retired gendarme and a missing wedding ring; Le Secret de la Chambre 7, a Provençal inn and a room nobody sleeps in; or Les Deux Colis de Margot, a courier who swaps two parcels, one of them full of figures that should never have left the office.
• B1: Le Train de nuit de Mme Vasseur, the brooch on the night train, or La Gardienne du Louvre, in which a guard suspects that a Vermeer is not what it was.
• B2: Les Témoins du Silence, a witness to a break-in who keeps changing her story; Le Secret de Grand-mère Colette, a grandmother with a forger's past; or Les Lettres de la Maison Vasseur, an auction house, a box of letters and an anonymous bidder who knows too much.

Most crime series are mysteries as well; the French mystery stories list the rest. Starting out? Try the A1 French stories first.