with Bernard Besson
We are delighted to welcome back novelist Bernard Besson to Omnimystery News today.
Bernard's first novel to be translated from his native French into English is the cli-fi spy thriller The Greenland Breach (Le French Book; October 2013 ebook formats; translated by Julie Rose) and we asked him to tell us more about the characters he created for his book.
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Photo provided courtesy of
Bernard Besson
Long ago, a French philosopher said, "Inspiration is other people." My career in intelligence and working for the police, the French government, and in corporate intelligence has put me in contact with a lot of very interesting people who inspire my writing.
I write because I want to share my beliefs and my concerns, as much as I write the book that I would like to read. I worry a lot about what my readers will think. I need to find stories that are worthy of my readers. It is important to me to have credible characters. Once I have a context — in the case of The Greenland Breach is global climate change — I invent characters that could experience conflict in this context. I draw my inspiration for them from real spies, police officers, reporters, business leaders, politicians, bankers, engineers, etc.
In The Greenland Breach, I started with a general situation — the control of rare earths, which are precious metals used to make high-tech products. In the story, I created characters connected to the context who I thought were credible. The reader will judge.
The story's heroes John Spencer Larivière, Victoire Augagneur and Luc Masseron were inspired by a reality I experienced working in the intelligence world. They have the career paths and character traits of people I have met. In the story, John is a former French military intelligence officer who was injured in Afghanistan and left the service to found Fermatown, a freelance spy operation/private investigation firm.
Unfortunately, as is often the case in real life, his business is not doing so well. Fermatown survives in part thanks to assignments they get from the intelligence services he worked for previously, and the relationship between the state services and Fermatown is not entirely clear. The French government uses Fermatown for delicate missions and is very slow to pay.
Victoire, who will have a baby in the sequel (which just came out in France), had a French father and a Cambodian mother. She is surprisingly beautiful, and can pass for Chinese among the Chinese. I originally had not thought about this ability, and the character suggested it to me as she stood in front of her make-up mirror on the third floor of the Fermatown offices.
In the end my characters are cleverer than I am. They do things I would never be able to do or dare to do. Inside them are people, both living and dead, whom I have admired.
Luc, the third character involved in Fermatown, is younger than John and Victoire. He is in love with both his bosses — both impossible loves. Luc is skilled at seducing both men and women, which proves useful in some circumstances, and he is a computer genius.
These three characters live in Paris, in the fourteenth arrondissement, down the street from where I actually live. The name of the company, Fermatown, comes from the name of the street, the Rue Fermat. They live in an odd-shaped house at number 9, which John Spencer Larivière inherited from his American aunt, who was a sculptor. It is a huge house, impossible to heat in winter, and it sucks up Fermatown's finances.
I attach a lot of importance to setting. In The Greenland Breach, the island-country of Greenland, with its tormented geological history, is also a character. It's a living land that is moving and transforming. And that land, with its vast spreads of ice and its dog sleds also inspired the book.
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Bernard Besson, who was born in Lyon, France, in 1949, is a former top-level chief of staff of the French intelligence services, an eminent specialist in economic intelligence and Honorary General Controller of the French National Police. He was involved in dismantling Soviet spy rings in France and Western Europe when the USSR fell and has real inside knowledge from his work auditing intelligence services and the police. He has also written a number of prize-winning thrillers, his first in 1998, and several works of nonfiction. He currently lives in the fourteenth arrondissement of Paris, right down the street from his heroes.
For more information about the Besson, please visit his author page on the Le French Book website.
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The Greenland Breach
Bernard Besson
A Cli-Fi Spy Novel
The Arctic ice caps are breaking up. Europe and the East Coast of the Unites States brace for a tidal wave. Meanwhile, former French intelligence officer John Spencer Larivière, his karate-trained, steamy Eurasian partner, Victoire, and their computer-genius sidekick, Luc, pick up an ordinary freelance assignment that quickly leads them into the heart of an international conspiracy. Off the coast of Greenland, a ship belonging to the French geological research firm Terre Noire is in serious trouble. The murder of an important scientist jeopardizes evacuation. Is it related to the firm's explorations? Is the rival Canadian-based scientific and economic development corporation, Northland Group, involved?
On land another killer is roaming the icy peaks after researchers, while a huge crevasse splits Greenland apart. What are the connections? In the glacial silence of the great north, a merciless war is being waged. Global warming and subsequent natural disasters hide international rivalries over discoveries that will change the future of humanity.
