Jean-François Parot

It’s winter in Bulgaria and the French conseiller d’ambassade in Sofia finds he’s got plenty of spare time on weekends. On one particular long, dark day, he sits down with the brand-new pen his mother and son gave him for Christmas and begins to spin a story about a police inspector in Paris. He places his hero in 18th-century France—that’s not a problem because he knows the period so well. He makes his character a fin gourmet too— no problem either because so is he. Finally, he gives his detective a Breton name and birthplace, because that’s where the fledgling writer has a home.

That’s how the much-acclaimed Nicolas Le Floch mystery series started—a diplomat, his pen, his imagination and an erudite passion for pre-Revolutionary France. Jean-François Parot, the creator of Nicolas Le Floch—historian, diplomat, epicurean, anthropologist and ethnologist—says that writing was a hobby and that he had no intention of publishing.

Fortunately for his many fans, he changed his mind. Nine books later—the ninth is scheduled to appear this month—the Nicolas Le Floch mysteries, conceived on a snowy day in Bulgaria twelve years ago, have sold some 500,000 copies, been translated into Italian, Japanese, English and Russian, and adapted for French TV. The Times of London hailed their “superb Parisian detail and atmosphere that truly beguiles” and the Independent on Sunday praised the “solid and detailed evocation of pre-Revolutionary France—the poverty and squalor, side by side with the wealth and splendor…”.

Parot’s books are mysteries, to be sure, but they are more than that—they are history as it happens. “I find the beginning of a plot,” says Parot, “then launch my hero and follow him. I don’t use an outline. An outline isn’t life!” He specifies that he’s more akin to Stendhal than Flaubert: other than liking food and Brittany, and being a claustrophobe, Nicolas is nothing like his creator.

More than one Le Floch admirer has commented on how wonderful it would have been to have had Parot’s books when studying French history. How enjoyable it would have been, how informative, how painless! From the very first book, The Châtelet Apprentice, the reader is plunged into the daily life of 18th-century France, following Le Floch, the 20-year-old godson of the Marquis de Ranreuil from his native Brittany to Paris, where he becomes an investigator appointed by Monsieur de Sartine, the Lieutenant General of Police. Parot has identified Sartine as a pivotal person, somewhere between today’s Minister of the Interior and the Prefect of Police. He has informers everywhere, and each week meets privately with the king to keep him abreast of the gossip circulating in Paris.

In the beginning, Nicolas is astonished by “the great city: its narrow streets and enormously tall houses, its dirty, muddy thoroughfares and multitudes of riders and carriages, the shouts and those unspeakable smells.” Soon, though, he becomes a real Parisian and finds the capital beginning to work its charm on him. He learns to dodge the carriages and protect himself from the “stinking muck that splashed his clothes, water from the gutters that poured down on passers-by, and streets transformed into raging torrents by a few drops of rain”.

After having his godfather’s silver watch stolen from him by a friendly guide, the young provincial also learns to be wary in the big city. Crowded streets, unsavory smells, pickpockets—sound familiar? One of the reasons the Nicolas Le Floch novels ring a bell with Paris lovers is the recognition factor. The books are replete with the names of monuments we know and streets we still walk down today. At the same time, there’s no doubt about the epoch. Says Parot: “I set myself the goal of never falling into anachronism, remaining firmly in the 18th century, and using the language people spoke, which was both working class and risqué.”

The career diplomat says that, although he was not born in Brittany, he’s “an adopted Breton” and very attached to this region of France which he knows so well, starting from childhood vacations. “On our way to Quiberon,” he said, as we chatted on the vast terrace of his apartment in a castle overlooking a 27-acre lake, “we often passed by the Château de la Bretesche. I was seven or eight years old, and for me it was a dream.” The dream came true in 1982, when he purchased an apartment within the castle. “It was appalling, completely in ruins,” he says, indicating the now superbly restored, high-ceilinged rooms, some with the original 19th-century wallpaper. In his spacious office a huge oak desk faces floor-to-ceiling bookcases with nary an inch to spare. (“I have a hard time giving a book away,” he says.)

Parot says he chose the name of his hero simply by consulting the phone book on the Internet. “Le Floch is one of the most common names in Brittany,” he says. Finding the name was absolutely essential: “Once your hero has a name, he exists.”

As does his era. Whether you read one book or several, whether you read them in order or randomly, you’ll travel back in time to the 18th-century streets of Paris, discovering what people wore, how they talked, how they washed, what they ate—especially what they ate. Inspector Le Floch shares with another famous inspector a love of good food. The comparison seems so evident that Le Figaro announced: “A new Maigret is born: Nicolas Le Floch.” Parot is quick to point out that, although he appreciates the writings of Maigret’s creator Georges Simenon, Le Floch is not Maigret. “For one thing, Maigret remains the same age—Nicolas gains two years with each book,” he specifies. In addition, the handsome bachelor investigator doesn’t go home to a Madame Maigret who’s got dinner waiting, but eats in taverns or the homes of friends.

In The Châtelet Apprentice, Nicolas stays in the home of Police Commissioner Lardin, to whom he is personal secretary, and is served a capon and oyster soup prepared by the Lardin’s cook Catherine. It’s so good he asks for the recipe, fully expecting to be kicked out of the kitchen. Instead, the former canteen-keeper gladly gives it: “I take two nice capons and bone them. I stuff one with the flesh of the other and add bacon, egg yolks, salt, pepper, nutmeg, a bouquet garni and spices. I tie it all with string and poach it in stock gently. Then I roll my oysters in flour and I fry them in butter with mushrooms. I cut up the capon and lay out the oysters, pour on the stock and serve with a trickle of lemon and some spring onion, piping hot.” And with that, writes Parot, Catherine “adopted Nicolas for good”. One critic noted that the recipes sound so savory that he put on five kilos simply by reading a Nicolas Le Floch mystery.

It’s clear that anyone who writes about food and Paris the way Parot does is a connoisseur of both. Parot’s father was a film editor, notably collaborating with Abel Gance on Napoléon and Carl Dreyer on Joan of Arc, and Parot says he had a very Parisian childhood. “Between the ages of five and 15 my father took me with him to very different parts of Paris. In my youth I was able to see a Paris that no longer exists, the Paris of the 19th century. Certain streets still had gas lamps and the noises were noises you no longer hear—the harnessing of horses delivering milk and ice, and vendors shouting ‘rabbit skins for sale’. I always have this vision of Paris in my mind, a Paris where you could very easily push open entry doors and see orchards, gardens and passages behind them. There’s more hidden in Paris than visible,” adds Parot, who sharpened his knowledge of the city by writing his master’s thesis on the social structures in three Paris neighborhoods from 1780 to 1785.

As for food, the former French Ambassador to Guinea Bissau, his last post before retirement this year, is said to have laid the best table in West Africa. A gourmet cook, he shrugs off the compliment but notes that the embassy served 3,500 guests over the three years he was there, and he was often at the market or in the kitchen supervising the seasoning. The delectable recipes in his books, he says, are either family recipes, recipes of the epoch (for example, the ones with truffles, which were then abundant), or invented recipes that he tests. While we talked, he recounted a dinner he’d recently made for a friend: freshly cooked sea bass topped by roasted slices of andouille, served with white beans from Paimpol. “I like the mer-terre combination,” he says, a gleam in his eye.

The affable gourmet author says one day he’d love to write La Cuisine des Postes, culling the best recipes from the countries in which he was posted—Zaire, Sudan, Qatar, Djibouti, Burkina Faso, Greece, Vietnam, Bulgaria, Tunisia and Guinea Bissau. As for Nicolas Le Floch, he plans to take him through the Revolution to the time of Napoleon—to the undoubted delight of Le Floch’s faithful fans and followers.

Harriet Welty Rochefort is the author of French Toast and French Fried. Visit her website here. Find them in the France Today Bookstore.

Originally published in the November 2010 issue of France Today.