The Brussels-based novelist Paul Colize wins the Arsène Lupin Prize

26/05/2016

In Paris, the 63-year-old Paul Colize received the Arsène Lupin Prize for crime fiction for his last detective novel "Concerto pour quatre mains" (Ed. Fleuve).

The author of about a dozen crime novels, Paul Colize is a leading name in French language thrillers and has received many awards, including the Landerneau Prize for detective novels for Un long moment de silence (published by Manufacture des Livres), in 2013. This year, in Paris, the author received the Arsène Lupin Prize for Concerto pour quatre mains, published last year and already awarded the Plume de Cristal Prize.

The novel recounts the robbery of a convoy transporting diamonds worth several million euros. The story recalls a real-life robbery that took place in 2013 on the tarmac of Brussels Airport, when 37 million euros worth of diamonds were stolen by François Troukens, a former bank robber who was sentenced to several years in prison and who is now a French-language Belgian television host.

The Arsène Lupin Prize was created in 2006 and, every year, it rewards a book for the originality of its form and content in the field of crime writing. The prize perpetuates the spirit of Maurice Leblanc, the creator of the famous burglar, Arsène Lupin.