Prudence, prudence romantic fiction well hidden under the trappings of a police investigation

The great caution is to the reader. The author, Raphaelle Bacqué, a journalist specializing in the socialist world (see his book on Ségolène Royal managed femme fatale), proposes as her romantic fiction about a being who existed, who lived and died in circumstances Unresolved: To date two opposing views in fact, that of suicide - which is taken by the author - and that of murder - one of the first promoters Barril was the captain. The eagerness of the Elysee police to clean the office Grossouvre François and his official apartment at Quai Branly leaves many questions unanswered.

- The exercise of novelistic style is successful. Reading is warning of the biography of François Durand Grossouvre, sponsor of Mazarine, industrial, financial Mitterrand in 1965 whose custom was to never have money on you when he was moving, leaving guests the task to pay the restoration of notes and hotels, network man who knew so well how to help the Socialist candidate, advisor to the President died at the Elysée is captivating. The novel is successful. It is written as a thriller - genre to which I attached elsewhere. On this level, and that of the description of the magnetism exerted by Mitterrand, the book is interesting. Paranoia Mitterrand to protect his second life (Anne Pingeot, his mistress and his daughter Mazarine) and on the end of his life, his obsession with death are also well described in my view.

- However, behind this exercise in style, hides the dramatization of a scenario that would meet well to the specifications set for the author: that of a control (see interview with Henri de Groussouvre - attached reference in Appendix). The supposedly exhaustive investigation conducted by Raphaelle Bacqué met strong opposition from children François Grossouvre, whose young son Henry is the spokesman. A press release was sent to the author that I found an excerpt:

You conclude a suicide, while you make in your book no evidence or new evidence in the record ... Throughout your book, you let yourself go to a fiction incompatible with a serious investigation. Imagine for example my father striking his cane (he has never used) the floor of his apartment Quai Branly to express his dissatisfaction with Anne Pingeot and Mazarine inhabiting the floor below. Your book is full of this kind of wacky inventions ... The only new element that you bring awkwardly wrong in the sense that you defend the thesis (a suicide). You emphasize the disturbing presence of Michel Charasse on the scene. Charasse, as we know, with the complicity of the president, the orchestra immediately "Elysian communication" (citing early senility of the victim, Ed), and will immediately remove the personal papers of my father ... >>

Furthermore the employee for several years at the Elysee Palace, Francois de Groussouvre Pierre d'Alencon, rejects very many points of shape and volume of the background in question (see references in Appendix)

These two stories questioning the drive on the merits of the argument put by the author.

How would write such a book? For romance, 4 stars is necessary; for the investigation and the search for truth, 2 stars seems generous: the arithmetic mean of the two denotes a certain frustration on my part.