An unusual beginning but a complicated one. A woman with amnesia on a road in Barcelona. She is of French origin and the artist must try to complete her past if he himself is to find some kind of happiness with her. He has fallen in love and wants to know what her past is like.

The past unravels to enfold Daniel into a nightmare. Is he willing to go the extra mile into a very dark place for the sake of his love for Marianne. A quite simple love story overshadowed by dark mystery

Goodreads and Amazon review posted 4/11/2017. Review on my blog will be posted on 30/11/2017.

Frédéric Dard was an extraordinarily popular and prolific French writer of thrillers who got his start trying to imitate hard-boiled authors. I think this was his attempt to channel Ross Macdonald, in fact the whole book could have sprung from Macdonald's, "You can't get away from the past. It's built into one's life. You can't wall it off or evade it or undo it. It's inescapably and inevitably there, like a deformed child in a secret room of one's house." That's from the 1953 [[ASIN:0307740773 Meet Me at the Morgue]], The Executioner Weeps was published three years later.

A French artist living in Catalonia hits a young woman with his car one night, and smashes her violin. She is not seriously injured, but she has amnesia. The artist becomes increasingly obsessed with her, and begins digging into her past. Meanwhile (of course) the past is rushing up to meet him. In the beginning, the story focuses on the psychology of the artist, which seems start imposing itself on the woman. However, the woman has some strong blocks. As the artist learns more about the source of those blocks, the interest shifts to the psychology of the woman, which now seems to be taking over the artist. A folie à deux duel.

As a mystery, it is adequate, a solid three star book. Lots of good color and a tight psychological plot, but it never feels in the least bit real. There are some first-rate paranoid action scenes, but on the whole the story only oozes forward, and doesn't seem to have a direction other than deeper into the two main characters' minds. The secondary characters are wooden, the dialog pedestrian. It reads like an imitation by an author who doesn't have a deep understanding of the original, and has the wrong kind of talent for the job. On the plus side, it has both a terrific climax and a very different great ending.

I move it up to four stars for the light it shines on how at least one French person understood the hard-boiled school. He got the right idea for the plot, but lets far too much of it be driven by soft-boiled romantic dreaming about the meaning of painting and music. His narrator spends a lot more time thinking about food and wine than Lew Archer ever did. There's no hint of the freedom of Los Angeles or America in general, the major and minor characters seemed trapped in social roles that were largely determined by birth.

I recommend it as an adequate semi-hard-boiled psychological mystery that has added interest from the Gallic spice.

This taut little gem of a thriller, originally published in 1956, still packs quite a wallop today. In the noir convention, but with enough thrills and surprises to warrant re-publication. A quick, exciting read! Would make an intriguing film. Thanx to Netgalley for the ARC.

A woman steps out in front of a car driven by an artist making his way through the mountains near Barcelona. She survives the accident, but appears to have no memory of who she is. Her only possession of any note is a violin damaged by the accident.
As she convalesces in the artist’s care, the two fall in love. But it is a romance which threatens to take a sinister turn.
The Executioner Weeps was first published in 1956, but could have been written by a modern author who chose to set their story in that time.
There is great depth to the storytelling in this novel, in the breathtaking scenery, capturing the whole feel of that era, and the developing relationship between the couple. There is indeed a love story, only there is an uncomfortable edge to it as the further into the romance we are taken, the more claustrophobic and worrying it becomes for the reader.
As the story moves on it becomes ever more difficult to work out who is more vulnerable in the relationship the amnesiac woman or the artist.
Given the time the novel is set this type of relationship would be more than frowned on, but even a modern reader will have a great sense of unease with a woman who is so willing to fall into a relationship with a man who’s biography of himself she has to take at face value, which makes you question her motive. Yet Frédéric Dard’s writing leaves you questioning your own ability to make a proper judgement.
The story unfolds brilliantly and the denouement is a shocking revelation even by today's standards in crime writing.

Ever since introducing myself to translated crime last year with Six Four by Hideo Yokoyama (Japanese) and The Murdered Banker by Augusto De Angelis (Italian), I’ve been trying to try crime stories from different countries to get a flavour of the various crime writing cultures. So when I saw The Executioner Weeps by Frederic Dard, a late French crime writer, on Netgalley, I jumped at the chance to read some French crime.

This is a slow burner that starts with a bit of a bang, quite literally. Our main man Daniel is involved in a car accident which leaves him with a smashed violin case and a young woman with no name or memory. After this initial excitement, the story goes along at quite a gentle pace as Daniel is desperate to help this woman regain her lost memories or at least remember her name! I really felt sorry for this nameless girl; the thought of losing my memories entirely to the extent I don’t even know my own name is a scary one and one that I hope never becomes a reality.

It wasn’t a bad story, it has a few moments of excitement – #nospoilers here – but it didn’t totally enthral me like a lot of the crime thrillers I’ve read. I might read another offering from Monsieur Dard but I will be looking for other translated crime before that – no it hasn’t put me off!

Many thanks to Pushkin Vertigo and Netgalley for my copy of The Executioner Weeps.

He felt like she threw herself in front of his car. He was driving back to his room late at night and she jumped in front of him just like a deer would. He couldn't stop. When he turns her over, he finds that she is still alive...

Pushkin Vertigo and Net Galley allowed me to read this book for review (thank you). It will be published March 28th.

He takes her back to the place he's staying and they get a doctor for her. The doctor says she wasn't hurt badly and should be fine but she can't remember anything. She doesn't know her name, if she was married, or where she came from.

Mr. Dard writes succinctly and without a lot of detail but his stories make you sit up and pay attention. This could easily be made into a play that would shock you.

He comes up her first name. He buys her another violin to replace the one he drove over. He buys her clothes and soon they fall in love. She still doesn't remember much. She remembers the room she practiced her violin in. He's caught between wanting to know and being afraid of finding out.

When his artwork can be shown in the US, he has to see if he can get her a visa to leave the country. She has no passport or visa with her. What he does when he gets to the city is see if he can find out about her past. He should have just left it alone.

The ending is unusual and unexpected. It's an ironic twist that will pop into my mind here and there in the future. Mr. Dard wrote strong stories that capture you and make their point. If you haven't read him yet, you should.

First published in 1956, The Executioner Weeps is a psychological thriller that poses the question how far would you go to protect the person you love? When Daniel encounters the unknown woman, he is drawn both to her beauty and in a strange way to the fact that she remembers nothing of her past. In fact he contends: ‘I was living the dream that all men have: of loving woman without a past. A woman to whom we represent a new start’. In contradiction is his assertion that ‘There’s nothing more terrifying for a painter than a blank white canvas. It’s like a window that opens onto infinite possibilities. A window from which the most disturbing metamorphoses may emerge.’

This is the first of many links between the act of creating art and the uncovering of the mystery woman’s identity. Significantly, it is in the act of painting the woman that Daniel gets the first sense of something dark behind the attraction of her beauty and grace.

‘I had succeeded in capturing [her] most unguarded expression so well that I could read her character better in my painting than in her face. Now...I detected a bizarre glint [in her eye] which quite disconcerted me.’

Later he reflects that ‘It was strange how my artistic eye unconsciously picked out what had escaped my plain man’s eye.’

When Daniel starts to detect hints about the woman’s past and more worryingly, her memory shows signs of returning, he feels compelled to find out where she came from and how she came to be on the road on the night of their encounter. What he discovers will draw him into a ‘macabre vortex’ and a web of deceit that will have tragic consequences. You may never want to open a door in an empty house again!

I really enjoyed this dark, noir-ish thriller and introduction to the work of Frederic Dard.

As good as I have often found this publisher's Vertigo crime imprint to be, this is one of the best. What is it with the French that they can give us Dard, Garnier and perhaps more yet to come, all in the way of brief visits to compellingly dark worlds? This one is the brightest of those dark worlds, wherein a French artist on a working holiday south of Barcelona falls in love with a woman who he runs over – a woman that has no memory. It boils down to a definitely Hitchcockian tale of obsession, but there's no real boiling down – it's a simple little tale but never too abruptness for its shortness, never at all flimsy for its brevity. It's a whole encapsulation of the criminally-in-love in a fully realised world, and it's really quite brilliant. (Awful proof-reading on my netgalley, mind – let's hope the finished work has been processed properly.)

The unusual story line keeps you reading on.. Loved the way the end comes together.
Would like to read more from this author..

Thank you Net Galley. A well written book, full of twists and turns. The complicated relationship between the two protagonists is addictive. You keep turning the pages eager to see what comes next. A must read.

Native Frenchman Daniel Mermet is vacationing near Barcelona. As a painter with an up and coming gallery exhibition, he views the world with artistic intensity. When a beautiful, young woman walks into the path of Daniel's car, he focuses on her broken violin case. Redirecting his attention to the woman, she seems unharmed, however, he decides to take her to his hotel and send for a local doctor. The woman has no papers or passport, no money and a case of amnesia. Who is she?

Daniel embarks upon a quest of discovery. A handkerchief in her possession is embroidered with the letter "M". Her clothes have a label from Saint German-en Laye, a Paris clothing shop. She speaks French. As Daniel tries to unravel her past, he falls deeply in love with "Marianne" and will circumvent the law to be with her. Daniel's love and cunning will be tested as snippets of Marianne's past slowly emerge and Daniel enters a dark, life changing nightmare.

"The Executioner Weeps" by Frederic Dard was originally published in 1956. Dard, a French crime writer, has written a novella which is both a mystery and a love story. It is fast paced, intense and dark. I was mesmerized.

Thank you Hanover Publisher Services, Steerforth Press and Net Galley for the opportunity to read and review "The Executioner Weeps".