Nora, a puzzle of literature and death(ed. Douro), the latest work by our friend Jehan Van Langhenhoven (already encountered in this section), has just been released.
To introduce himself to readers, Jehan could not be more sober: "Childhood in the working-class, red-light suburbs. Indelible marks. Owns a dog. Unwavering loyalty beyond death and the years." It should be added that he is the host of a show on Radio Libertaire that has seen many a distinguished crowd pass before its microphone for a good number of years!
This time, he still draws us, armed with his fiery pen full of verve, into the mystery of the beautiful and voluptuous Nora, "woman of all pleasures." The mystery of her short life is commented on by the narrator of this little book: Nicki Bellmoor. An anti-hero "in search of the Nobel Prize for erotic and spellless books"! A reporter for the Paris News, specializing in bloody news stories, he will try to put together for us all the pieces of the "puzzle" surrounding the murder of the beautiful and troubled Nora.
However, Niki finds himself among the presumed culprits of the beautiful woman's murder, along with a good dozen other individuals, including a young beardless man; a supposedly one-armed man; a "formidable" docker; and Sandro Becker, "the last surviving painter of the Grand Painting Barnum." All will be questioned in turn by inspectors as unusual and atypical as the defendants.
Between two digressions - about which the author, in passing, philosophizes "but what is life if not a long series of digressions" -, Niki will try to see a little more clearly in this imbroglio, confiding his doubts to a palette of colorful individuals. We are only at the beginning of the story when the author warns us that "the following chapters will be full of asides, side roads, feet in the dish or explosive hair in the steaming soup"!
After the burial of poor Nora at Père Lachaise, Niki's adventures never flirt with boredom or languor. They will continue under other skies (the Bronx), without her obsession disappearing: "to keep the ghost of her heroine alive."
This small collection, "full of umbilicated nerves," gives us the opportunity to meet, even briefly, some distinguished guests, such as Herman Melville; Dylan Thomas, Charles Baudelaire "that expert in funeral theater, phantasmagoria and various simulacra"; Francis Bacon, Ibsen and even the wrestler Maurice Tillet, known as "the monster." Enjoy your trip!

Patrick Schindler, individual FA Paris

https://www.monde-libertaire.fr/?articlen=8248&article=Objectif_Mars_pour_le_rat_noir