Philippe Jaenada reacts to Catherine Girard's book: "Everything she describes about the crimes allegedly perpetrated by her father is false."
Interview : Did Georges Arnaud, author of "The Wages of Fear," massacre his family in 1941? In "In Violentia Veritas," his daughter affirms that he did. For Philippe Jaenada, who recounted this affair in "La Serpe," he is innocent, and it is the memory of his father, grandfather, and aunt that is being tarnished. He explains in detail why.
But what is happening in the shadow of a remarkable and acclaimed novel from this season? Curiosity has been focused for several days on a book published by Grasset, "In Violentia Veritas" by Catherine Girard. It is known that she is the daughter of the writer Georges Arnaud, whose real name was Henri Girard (1917-1987), who entered literary and cinematic history with "The Wages of Fear," and in the annals of justice through an extraordinary incident that occurred during the Occupation. In the winter of 1941, he was accused of having massacred his father, his aunt, and the maid with a billhook, in the family castle of Escoire near Périgueux. This is the subject of "In Violentia Veritas." If Georges Arnaud was acquitted thanks to that courtroom magician, Maurice Garçon , suspicion followed him to the grave. His daughter grabs it and enters the bookstore with revelations: her father did indeed murder his family. The proof is that he confessed it to her when she was 14.
Despite the insightful description of the mechanism of control that drove his father to commit crime, there is a problem with this book. The problem is Philippe Jaenada . This highly regarded writer, who spends his life in archives shaking out old rugs, knows the Escoire triple murder case by heart – and…
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