Reviews

Fantomas by Marcel Allain, Pierre Souvestre

mattsjaeger's review against another edition

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4.0

100 year old French crime fiction - would never have predicted I would have had so much fun reading it, but there you go. Your suspension of disbelief is required, but if you’re game, this read is full of twists and turns and mistaken identities.

mylogicisfuzzy's review against another edition

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1.0

I think the fact that the authors were given a month in which to write Fantomas is telling. It is just terrible, sensationalist, yes, but superficial, with no depth to it, a convoluted plot and hordes of uninteresting and underdeveloped characters. It's also dated badly. I guess the fact that we have this criminal who continues to get away with it (since there are 30 odd Fantomas books, this is not a spoiler) made it a bit subversive at the time and perhaps this was the appeal to the surrealists but as a literary work, I found no value in it whatsoever - I read it because it is on Guardian's list of 1,000 novels everyone should read. Really? It's a pulp novel and not a particularly good one at that.

sarah42783's review against another edition

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3.0

I was very eager to read this book and although I did enjoy it, it wasn't as good as I expected it to be. There are two main problems with this novel: the plot is quite erratic and there is little character development. Still, it is a fun and enjoyable pulp fiction read, mostly because its main character is an arch-villain, which is quite irresistible.

ginpomelo's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious tense slow-paced
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

1.5