Bove, Emmanuel – The fiancee of the violinist:

A corpse of a woman is found buried in the garden of the Favrin, apparently no-life couple living in a house in Viroflay, near Paris. Mrs. Favrin having disappeared for some time, we arrest the husband, presumed guilty of this crime. But the commissioner Croiserel, in charge of the investigation, suspects quickly that the case is much more complex than it looks and it investigates, look like anything, near all the entourage of this strange couple.

A brutal husband, a fickle musician lover, a rich couple of whom Madame Favrin is a governess, an unexpected reappearance of this one, a kidnapping of a child, Croiserel advances in her search and interrogations: but what is the motive of this heinous crime?

All the ingredients are there to keep the reader in suspense until the unexpected final outcome.

Emmanuel Bove, under the pseudonym Pierre Dugast, published this first crime novel (the second being The Murder of Suzy Pommier, also published at the BNR) in 1933 under the title La toque de breitschwantz. In spite of the very conventional style of the “noir novel”, one finds all the interest of Bove for the complexity of the human nature, and this gloomy and heavy atmosphere, so characteristic of his other novels.