The gentlemen of the night of Nicomedes Beatrice (published by Gulf Stream currents Collection Black, 2010, ISBN 978-2-35488-076-7) is a small taste of Moonfleet. For not find that taste, I think it would be totally ignorant of what Falkner novel or movie that Fritz Lang drew . Or even, since The gentlemen of the night aimed primarily at teenagers, have not read adapting Moonfleet in BD by Rudolph and Hey . Anyway, knowing neither the novel nor the film or the comic would be a crime by looking at it optimistically, it would even be an opportunity to explore these three works are worth, each in its own way, the detour.
But I return to Gentlemen of the night. Difficult for me, I said, not to find the scent of Moonfleet : the English coast a little wild (here, those of the Isle of Wight) to the late eighteenth century, the islanders Poverty forced into maritime smuggling, hiding in caves and in cemeteries, tons of water spirits and boxes of lace, games of cat and mouse between smugglers and customs in more or less nights moon, and for teenagers in the affairs of adults. Yet Beatrice
Nicodemus does not fall into plagiarism. Beyond the plot a little classic, it adds a personal touch, carving the portraits of his characters, their faces clear as their dark sides. The most dangerous enemy of the smugglers is not here, the customs, but the insidious evil that has slipped in one of their groups.
Although the shadow of Moonfleet weigh any long novel that tells stories of maritime smugglers in the eighteenth century, no pen should refrain from venturing into this theme there. After all, many authors are allowed to write novels musketeers and swordsmen after Alexandre Dumas pere, and some have excelled in this genre. So when a novel launches a nod to Moonfleet while adding a personal touch to greet him as his own merits, and The gentlemen of the night do not miss.
I read this novel with my eyes and my adult mind, but I think apart from these historical aspects and "policeman", the novel can provide teens interesting topics for reflection, as the complexity relationships of love and hatred between the same two people, the wall of silence behind which a father hides his son the reasons and circumstances of the death of his mother, or the liberties that allow themselves to older men on young women who are in their power for reasons of marriage or employment.
After this stroke of tricorn to the author, the scratch (almost mouth) to the editor: what is the inconsistent person who wrote the back cover of this book? The real traitor, traitor or true, smugglers, is this person, who reveals in the blurb of the novel, two-thirds of the plot! I will applaud both hands if he is unmasked and swaying to the sea for the waves and crabs make him a disastrous fate. A plague of inconsequential that deprive readers of a large part of the pleasure of reading.
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