Formula-driven works of crime fiction, and particularly the mystery novel, have often been cast as those versions of the genre that are the least adaptable to new forms of enquiry, or the least permeable to the influence of the major issues of their day. This judgement was certainly given some authority by the rules of the mystery novel that were drafted by practitioners like S.S. Van Dine (1928) and by the writers whose popular success was built upon the respect of the traditions of the genre. However, rules are meant to be broken, especially in the criminal sphere (Dubois 1992: 157), and nowhere is this more apparent than in the forms of the genre that were practised in France by Maurice Leblanc and Gaston Leroux. Far from being narrowly driven by the resolution of enigmas, their novels present multiple layers of meaning that work to undermine the sense of closure they appear to promise. Theirs is a dynamic and shifting world that is much more in tune with the complexities of real-life concerns than might first be suspected. The reasons both writers opened their works, if not overtly to social or political commentary, at least to the tensions and undercurrents of contemporary life, can be attributed to the momentous times in which they exercised their craft. This was the France of the dawn of the twentieth century, a period of stark contrasts, characterized by boundless energy and dark despair.

For those who had lived through the Great War, the decades that immediately preceded it took on retrospectively the aura of a Golden Age. The belle époque, as this period was nostalgically named, was indeed a time of prosperity and progress. Thanks to the extended peace that followed the Franco–Prussian War (1870–71), Europe’s economy eventually recovered from the depression of the final decades of the nineteenth century, and by the middle of the 1890s a new-found confidence began to emerge. This was fuelled by the technological marvels of the time: moving pictures, flying machines, motor cars, underground rail transport and the mastery of electricity.

The artists on the Baudin expedition, Charles-Alexandre Lesueur and Nicolas-Martin Petit, left us a substantial legacy in terms of the drawings of antipodean peoples, landscapes and coastal profiles which they executed during and after their voyage of scientific discovery to Australia between 1800 and 1804. Many of these works are now well known, thanks to the publication of the various Atlases of the official account of the expedition, the Voyage de découvertes aux Terres australes, and their modern facsimile editions. Other images, which have remained unpublished, demand to be better known, given the energy that emanates from them, their sense of engagement with their subjects, and, not least, the information encoded within them of the new worlds and people they encountered. Although there are some exquisite watercolours of antipodean marine life to be found in the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris, by far the most important repository of the unpublished drawings and sketches of Lesueur and Petit is the Lesueur Collection in the Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle of Le Havre. Within the Australian subjects of the collection, one vividly coloured map stands out, as much for its attractiveness as for its picturesque detail: this is the watercolour entitled ‘Nouvelle Hollande’, executed by Charles-Alexandre Lesueur (Figure 4.1). Although the form and presentation of its title, ‘Nouvelle Hollande’, indicate that Lesueur originally intended this work for the Atlas of the official account of the Voyage, it ultimately remained unpublished. Given the formal beauty of the image, we are quite naturally led to regret its exclusion from the Atlas, especially since the engraved map of Sydney that does feature in it singularly lacks the aesthetic appeal of the watercolour (Figure 4.2).

However, this substitution is only too easily explained. Unlike the engraving, which Lesueur drew to scale, based on a survey by the expedition's hydrographer, Charles Boullanger, the watercolour bears no such endorsement as to its accuracy. As Robert Irving has pointed out: ‘Lesueur's map is exquisite, but he was no surveyor. The map is wrong in a number of respects, including the waterline’. Indeed, is it even a map? Paul Carter describes Lesueur's work more generally as ‘poised between rival visions, between the first impressions appropriate to a logbook and the scientific figures fit to adorn a scientific treatise’.

Introducing Boris Vian to an Anglo-Saxon audience presents something of a challenge, principally because he is so well known in his native France that it is difficult to imagine how he could have escaped the attention of the rest of the world. And yet, Vian remains almost unknown outside academic circles in countries such as Great Britain and the United States, where so many other prominent figures of the French cultural and intellectual landscape of the 1940s and 1950s — most of whom Vian frequented and counted as his friends — remain a subject of enduring fascination. Whereas other figures of that heady period such as Georges Perec, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir have long been granted a place in the pantheon of world literature, Vian remains obstinately in the shadows. In terms of public impact, then, we might say that Boris Vian is one of France's most surprising export failures.

Why surprising? Because Vian's involvement in the Parisian intellectual life of the post-war period and the eclectic nature of his artistic pursuits — which ranged from hard-boiled crime writing to science fiction and jazz — give him the kind of profile that would seem tailor-made to appeal to a wider public, and particularly to the English-speaking world. It is nevertheless the case that his life and work have not yet found that broader resonance.

When Nicolas Baudin returned to France in June 1798 following his successful expedition to the West Indies, the Director of the Paris Museum, Antoine-Laurent de Jussieu, was moved to write to the Minister of Marine and the Colonies recommending that another scientific mission be entrusted to this “excellent mariner” so that the nation might benefit further from his talents. In his enthusiasm, Jussieu declared that “the experience of the past and the knowledge of his former achievements make us believe that he follows worthily in the steps of Bougainville, La Pérouse and d'Entrecasteaux, and that he will be more fortunate than the last two.” Just under two years later, Jussieu would be granted his wish: in April 1800, the First Consul, Bonaparte, signed off on a proposal for a new voyage of discovery to the Southern Lands, under the command of Nicolas Baudin. The fates—or as one member of Baudin's team would have it, Clio, the Muse of History in person—seemed to have smiled upon the newly commissioned captain.

Despite Jussieu's firm belief, however, the captain was not to enjoy a happier fate than La Pérouse or d'Entrecasteaux, nor did Clio's patronage extend to the voyage itself. For Baudin had enemies, and they were so successful in blackening his reputation that they managed to cast a shadow over the entire undertaking.