I love these books. I can buy them in Portugal for 50p and piece and they phenomenal covers. French police stories are fantastic because everything revolves around sex; which speaks to me as more realistic than American det novels (often about conspiracy theories, threats from other countries or from powerful men - to be fair some of them are quite frank about sex too) and British novels (which don’t seem to mention sex at all or when they do, it’s almost in passing and with no relevance to the story).

I find that the French frankness about sex leads to better crime novels that speak more about reality to me. I get the impression that the kind of crime novels each country has really speaks to their character (or intended character - I think the British are as horny as any other people, but they are bad at talking and thinking about sex).