Monsieur Pamplemousse

By the early 1980s Michael Bond was internationally known as an author of children's stories. His Paddington Bear series, begun 25 years earlier, had been translated into nearly 20 languages, and adapted for stage and screen.[2] His first book for adults, Monsieur Pamplemousse, was published in 1983. It featured Aristide Pamplemousse, a former detective in the Sûreté nationale. The character is at the centre of 17 further Monsieur Pamplemousse novels published over more than two decades, nearly to the end of the author's life; Bond, a Francophile, was inspired while dining in a French restaurant to write about a French detective who became a restaurant critic.[3] A Times article revealed that Bond wrote the novels in Montmartre, where he had an apartment.[4]

By the time of his first appearance Pamplemousse has been obliged to retire early from the police service. having been found in compromising – though in fact perfectly innocent – circumstances with fifteen chorus girls at the Folies Bergère. Since then he has been an undercover inspector for France's oldest and most prestigious restaurant guide, known simply as Le Guide, a rival of the Michelin and Gault Millau guides.[5]

Le Guide − wholly fictitious unlike its supposed rivals − is based in the seventh arrondissement of Paris, near Les Invalides.[6] Its Director, Henri Leclercq,[7] lives in some style in a large house on the fringe of Paris, and is something of a snob, adding a q to the surname Leclerc, to make it more distinguished.[8] Many of the novels begin with a request from the Director to Pamplemousse to undertake some extracurricular activity − for the benefit of Leclercq, Le Guide or even La France − from which extravagant complications ensue.[9]

The Director's discreet but influential secretary is an important player at Le Guide, but the dominant female figure in the organisation is the formidable Madame Grante, in charge of Le Guide's finances; Pamplemousse is in recurrent conflict with her over the magnitude of his expenses claims.[10] Despite her forbidding exterior, the widowed Madame Grante is sufficiently susceptible to male charms that in Monsieur Pamplemousse Investigates she has to be rescued from a scheming abductor by Pamplemousse and Pommes Frites.[11]

Pamplemousse and his wife, Doucette – for whom his affectionate pet-name is "Couscous" – live in an apartment in a block of flats in the Rue Girardon, in the Grandes-Carrières district of Montmartre, between the Cimetière de Montmartre and Sacre Coeur.[12] Madame Pamplemousse is tolerant of her husband's perplexing goings-on, although irritated by his untidiness, muddy shoes and stray hairs.[13] She is a good cook, unlike her sister Agathe, whose attempts at tripe à la mode de Caen are for Pamplemousse "a sure recipe for indigestion".[14] His favourite restaurant is Le Maquis, a bistro, in the Rue Caulaincourt (a real restaurant).[15][16]

The bloodhound Pommes Frites is, like Monsieur Pamplemousse, retired from the police. He had been on attachment to the eighteenth arrondissement, where Monsieur Pamplemousse lives, when he was made redundant following a government cut-back, and the Pamplemousses rescued him from being sent to a dogs' home.[13] Pamplemousse takes him walking in the Parc Monceau.[17] Madame Pamplemousse is as exasperated by the dog's tendency to shed hairs throughout the apartment as she is by her husband's similar failing.[18] Pommes Frites has a nose and palate of great discernment, and is permitted to sit under his master's table in most restaurants. On inspections for Le Guide the two journey all around France in Pamplemousse's old Citroën Deux Chevaux, described by an acquaintance as looking like "a roll-top desk on wheels".[19]

An occasional colleague in Pamplemousse's investigations is an Englishman, Mr Pickering of Burgess Hill, whom Le Guide retains as an adviser "on account of his vast and expert knowledge of wine … a fountain of information, as indeed he was on many other things".[20]

The publisher's summary of Monsieur Pamplemousse Afloat gives an example of a typical plot involving Pamplemousse and Pommes Frites:

In Monsieur Pamplemousse on the Spot, Pamplemousse is staying at Les Cinq Parfaits, a world-renowned hotel-restaurant on the shores of Lac Leman. One of the proprietors disappears; Pamplemousse comes to the rescue "and in no time at all is up to his eyeballs in trouble – especially when he encounters Fräulein Brünnhilde, gym-mistress at a nearby girls' finishing school, and proud possessor of two magnificently large and undeniably desirable balcons".[22]

For Monsieur Pamplemousse Takes the Cure, the Director sends Pamplemousse to sample a de luxe health farm. In addition to detesting the spartan regime, Pamplemousse begins to suspect something more sinister behind the establishment, with a hearse in daily attendance, and he exposes a cocaine smuggling operation.[23] In Monsieur Pamplemousse on Probation, after the hero's unfortunate collision with a Mother Superior is caught on camera he is sent out of the reach of publicity to report on a chef currently in line for Le Guide's top award, and "opens a can of worms which threatens the very sanctity of France's premier gastronomic bible".[24]

The novels include details of the classic French dishes tasted by Pamplemousse, and on occasion by Pommes Frites, whose palate is put to the test in Monsieur Pamplemousse and the French Solution, in which his skills are shown off in a blind tasting where he distinguishes top quality poulet de Bresse, agneau des Pyrénées and Charolais beef from inferior competitors.[25] Pamplemousse and his dog also sample and opine on wine throughout the series.[26]

In 1986 The Guardian referred to "Michael Bond's marvellous Monsieur Pamplemousse" comparing him with another fictional French detective, Inspector Clouseau.[27] Another reviewer in the same year wrote of Monsieur Pamplemousse on the Spot:

In the Irish Independent Ruth Dudley Edwards felt that Bond had not fully made the leap from children's fiction to its adult counterpart, "much knowledgeable carry-on about food and wine and jolly sex scenes notwithstanding".[29] The Observer praised "four-star moments among the custard pies".[30] In The Times Marcel Berlins wrote of an "engaging mix of farce, detection and cuisine", but thought Pommes Frites featured too prominently in Monsieur Pamplemousse on the Spot: "next time, grapefruit without chips, please".[1]

The BBC broadcast a serial reading from Monsieur Pamplemousse on the Spot in 1986 and a three-part dramatisation of Monsieur Pamplemousse Investigates in 1995, starring Gorden Kaye as the title character. This version was rebroadcast in 2004, 2006 and 2007.[31] The BBC has recorded audio book versions, narrated by Bill Wallis, of Monsieur Pamplemousse and the French Solution, Monsieur Pamplemousse and the Militant Midwives and Monsieur Pamplemousse Hits the Headlines.[32]