La logique de l'enquête chez Noël Vindry

Abstract

The primary aim of this paper is to bring out of oblivion Noël Vindry, one of the greatest French Detective writers of the “Golden Age” mysteries who has nothing to envy John Dikson Carr, an American master of the so-called “locked room mystery”. We will particularly high- light the interest of La Cinquième cartouche from an inferential point of view, by focusing our attention on the modus cogitandi of the detective in charge of the criminal investigation. It is from contingent facts that he arrives, through reasoning, at the rational explanation of an enig- matic fact by reconstituting, backwards, the history of the crime. The heuristic process leading from the clue to the resolution of the problem and, by extension, to the identification of the criminal goes necessarily through inference. This inference cannot be the slave of a strict logic (i.e. formal), either in reality or in fiction. In the canonical Detective Novel, the detective’s methods are based on utilitarian natural inference, as simple and intuitive as it is effective.