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Roger Martin. Georges Arnaud: Vie d'un rebelle. Paris. Calmann-Levy. 1993. 346 pages. 120 F.
Roger Martin has written an absorbing biography of "Georges Arnaud" (Henri Girard, 1917-87). Made famous by his novel Le salaire la peur (1950; Eng. The Wages of Fear), from which Henri-Georges Clouzot directed the classic 1953 movie, he is often confused with Georges J. Arnaud, a well-known detective-novel and science-fiction writer.
Arnaud/Girard's life was even more fantastic than those portrayed in Aragon, Kipling, or Jack London. He came to public notice in 1941, accused of the murder of his father (a historian and literaly critic), his aunt, and a maidservant at the family manor in Dordogne. The trial at Riom had a hundred witnesses, vitriolic prosecuting attorneys, and unexplained events of the fateful night. Although Girard pere was an archivist at Vichy, he had imbued his son with the cult of the revolutions of 1789, 1848, and the Commune, and both were strongly antipetainiste.
After nineteen months in prison and against all odds, Girard was acquitted. He could not settle down to the bourgeois life desired by Annie, his faithful fiancee, and went back to Paris. He...