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Patrick Chamoiseau's Solibo Magnifique and Raphaël Confiant's Le Meurtre du Samedi-Gloria share a marked similarity in their structure and principal theme. Both novels open with the death of a character central to the narrative and take the form of a "roman policier" or detective novel. The problematic nature of the death of the character leads the police to open an investigation into a suspected crime in Solibo and an indisputable murder in Le Meurtre.
In both narratives the police seek to elucidate the circumstances surrrounding the character's death, his identity, and his relation to the community in which he finds himself. The police search serves as a pretext for an inquiry by the two authors into the question of Creoleness, its location in the modern world, the forces impinging on its very existence in terms of the customs and language of the Creole people, and its possibility of survival.
The story of Chamoiseau's Solibo Magnifique centers around the mysterious death of Solibo, a Creole storyteller. Following a preliminary inquiry, police authorities led by the Brigadier-chef Philemon Bouaffesse and his superior, Chief Inspector Evariste Pilon, conclude that Solibo was murdered by some or all of the fourteen witnesses with him in his last moments-including the author/character/narrator Chamoiseau, variously called Chamzibié, Ti-Cham, and Oiseau de Cham.
After an autopsy eventually reveals that Solibo died not by another hand but by "internal strangulation," the police are forced to conclude that no crime occurred. Meanwhile the characters have been detained and interrogated. Solibo's companions all along explain to the police that his death came from "une égorgette de parole" ("-Pawol la bay an gÙjèt, la parole l'a égorgé...," 144 [the word slit his throat]). By the novel's end, the murder investigation, which has led to a dead end, turns into an inquiry into the identity of Solibo.
In Confiant's Le Meurtre du Samedi-Gloria, the cadaver of Romule Beausoleil, a "valeureux combattant de damier"1 (11) [a brave damier fighter], is discovered on the street in the ill-famed quarter of Morne Pichevin in Fort-de-France, torn and desecrated by a pack of dogs. He died from an ice pick driven into his throat. A police inquiry under Inspector Frédéric Dorval, reassigned to Martinique after 15 years with the French metropolitan police force,...