Chantecoq and the Aubry Affair

Coeur de Française...

Paris, 1912. When plans for Jean Aubry's revolutionary "combat aircraft" are stolen by a German spy, his daughter Germaine volunteers to bring them back. 

Disguised as a governess, Germaine infiltrates the highest levels of the German military. When she is finally unmasked and imprisoned, her father and her aviator fiancé call on the ultimate secret agent to help bring her home. 

Chantecoq. King of detectives, master of disguise. 

But even the mercurial, theatrical Chantecoq will find his ingenuity stretched to the very limits to rescue Germaine Aubry from Spandau Citadel. 

Originally published in 1912 as Coeur de Française, and translated into English for the first time, this first Chantecoq adventure is a bold pulp tale of honour, patriotism, romance, and selfless heroism. Filled with suspense, fast cars, swordfights and daring escapes, the action unfolds against a backdrop of growing hostility between France and Germany.

My second translation project was a departure from the 18th Century musings of Giacomo Casanova, but still featured flamboyant escapes from impregnable prison cells. Friends and readers have wondered quite loudly what led me to the project. The work was originally carried out with a view to a small press taking it on as part of a series of Chantecoq translations. Lack of publisher feedback on the manuscript prompted me to self-publish at the very end of 2015, again with a superb cover from Lawston Design.

Will I do any more Chantecoq translations? That depends entirely on how Chantecoq and the Aubry Affair fares with the reading public, to be honest. I remain interested in translating French novels in principle, but a lot of the Chantecoq novels are now moderately challenging to get hold of (and of course some have already been translated into English).

Chantecoq and the Aubry Affair is available on Kindle here.