From the very beginning, Monsieur Charlatan makes no bones about its commitment to an overwhelming film noir atmosphere, complete with a properly tormented protagonist. Despondent, lounging around listening to Lucienne Boyer’s “Parlez Moi D’Amour” without hope in his shoddily kept Parisian apartment, the once great detective Isidore Charlatan pines over his former fiancé and nightclub singer Adeline- who left him after the 1929 crash cleaned him out for the far wealthier Count, the unchallenged head of France’s underworld.
Luckily, his American reporter friend Magda, another crash victim, manages to talk him out of yet another suicide attempt and invites him out to a café lunch. The detective is then greeted with more abuse from rival and glory hound Inspector Louis, who would clearly like nothing more than for our broken lead to destroy his own legacy already in order to have his lofty position cemented. When he gets back home, second verse same as the first.
It doesn’t take long for the situation to pick up as the Count decides he has no more use for his new gold digger and hires Kamir Gerou, a professor with an unsavory background, to whack her at a nightclub opening Magda has dragged Charlatan to. After saving her life, Charlatan later finds himself in an unwanted triangle between the two women. Like a proper potboiler, it becomes clearer and clearer all of our protagonists have something to hide, as Adeline isn’t exactly jumping to report her attacker to the police, and Kamir still has dirty deeds to do dirt cheap as he continues to menace Isidore and Magda. Flashbacks gradually fill in more pieces of the puzzle, of which I will spoil no more of, as Charlatan eventually sobers up and begins to get his groove back.
Creator Angeliki Salamaliki goes as far as she can to do right by the detective genre. Charlatan, as far as I can tell, is an interesting mashup of Hercule Poirot and some of the more abrasive, self destructive portrayals of Sherlock Holmes. Salamaliki amps this up to the 10th power by making her gangly mustached hero as much of a wreck as possible without dampening his deduction skills in the process, although as the story progresses I would like to see maybe Charlatan go more in-depth into deciphering clues as opposed to just being right on every hunch he has.
The uniquely designed side characters are loads of fun so far. The inspector is a very interesting but loathsome little sack of flour, and Gerou’s backstory should leave most readers wanting more. Magda is a well done heroine with a cute southern accent (do I thank Ian Thomas Brocklehurst for that?), who clearly cares for Isidore and hopes to save him from himself, but is obviously at his wit’s end with him at the same time. There’s a healthy attention to detail in the artwork, which is somewhat scratchy with angular but expressive character designs, and a nice use of color as well as some extremely well done layouts provided by Kiriakos Gounelas. Plus there’s links to a soundtrack of sorts, all which capture the mood of the story and times.
I can’t go into much more detail about Monsieur Charlatan than that as the story is gradually unfolding, but so far it’s easily something I can recommend. Don’t be put off by its mess of a protagonist, because it’s that messiness that makes his tale so intriguing as of now. Find it right heah.