Cherokee by Jean Echenoz

First published: 1983 (English translation, 1987)

Type of work: Detective

Time of work: The 1980’s

Locale: Paris and the French Alps

Principal Characters:

• George Chave, a private detective, the protagonist
• Croconyan, a criminal, George’s friend
• Fred Shapiro, George’s cousin, a trader and confidence man
• Ferguson Gibbs, an English entrepreneur, Fred’s employer
• Jenny Weltman, the girl whom George idealizes

The Novel

Cherokee is a detective story patterned after New Wave films. Unlike most detective stories, it presents characters and events to the reader without explanation and often without connection. Confusedly, George Chave wanders through these events, pursuing his ideal girl and haphazardly accomplishing his assignments while other characters pursue wealth, one another, and George. Only in the superb climactic scene of the novel, when one group of characters after another appears, do their relationships and the plot itself become clear. The ultimate detective, then, is the reader, who must watch the characters and the plot elements as Jean Echenoz masterfully juggles them, working toward a conclusion which the writer alone has in mind.

The novel begins with a chance encounter in a bar between aimless, unemployed George Chave and a large, mysterious man known only as Croconyan, whom George saves from a knife-flashing assailant. Thinking no more of the incident, George goes on his way, finally obtaining a job with a detective agency in order to be able to buy gifts for his new mistress. Unfortunately, the other two employees of the agency have been making no headway on the agency’s three major assignments: to find a missing parrot, to locate a missing wife, and to ascertain who and where are the heirs to a fortune. Recognizing the husband’s description of the wife’s lover as Croconyan, George manages to locate and return the wife, who is released by her lover only because of his undying friendship with George. George’s success in the parrot case is even more surprising, but the other two detectives employed by the agency can only assume that their status is threatened by a genius, and they begin to plot George’s downfall, preferably before he can solve the inheritance case by finding the lost heirs.

Meanwhile, Ferguson Gibbs and his employee, the unscrupulous Fred Shapiro, are involved in two plots. By somehow impersonating the heirs to the fortune (the Ferros), they hope to inherit that fortune, and by convincing the members of the Rayonist cult that either Shapiro or Gibbs is their natural leader, they intend to seize the cult money. Thinking that George can be of help to them, Gibbs and Shapiro have him drugged and kidnapped. Meanwhile, the jealous detectives have put the French police on George’s trail. George escapes and hides for a time with Croconyan, then flees to the French Alps, where Croconyan, George’s mistress, and her lover join him. After the mistress is kidnapped, George finds himself at the Ferro estate, where a cult meeting is being held with Fred Shapiro and Ferguson Gibbs presiding and with the elusive Jenny Weltman acting as the cult goddess. Here more characters gather, including the remaining members of the detective agency, as well as police officers. In a gun battle which is a typical detective story finale, one member of the detective agency, who has throughout the story been injury-prone, is killed. The final scene is once again like a film script: a funeral procession, a burial, a mysterious car toward which Jenny Weltman beckons George, and finally, framed in the rearview mirror, Fred’s eyes.

The Characters

Because the characters are observed objectively, seen as they would be by the viewer of a film, their appearance and their clothing are fully described, while their thoughts and their motivations are usually masked, unless they happen to confide in other characters. Occasionally Echenoz will stop the story for an authorial explanation of a character’s history, as he does early in the novel to clarify Fred Shapiro’s involvement with Ferguson Gibbs; for the most part, however, readers must draw their own conclusions.

George Chave’s motivations are always clear. He wishes to please his mistress, to buy her a yellow dress and other gifts. Therefore, he gets a job, which happens to be with a detective agency. His mistress’ coldness and unfaithfulness, however, predispose George to another great passion. After a brief encounter with Jenny Weltman, he has a single goal: to find her, wherever she is. It is his quest for this ideal woman which takes him from adventure to adventure, accidentally surviving dangers and succeeding in detection, while others suspect him of being a schemer like themselves, rather than the innocent, single-minded lover that he is.

The other single-minded character in the novel is the criminal Croconyan, who subordinates his own interests to those of George, once he has become George’s faithful friend. Whenever George needs help, Croconyan appears; indeed, when he finds himself in the hands of the Rayonists, George is disappointed, almost surprised, that Croconyan has not rescued him.

While George is pursuing Jenny and Croconyan is protecting George, several entrepreneurs are quite willing to resort to crime in order to make money. The Ferro inheritance and the Rayonist fund both inspire elaborate deception. The pleasant, wealthy Ferguson Gibbs and the scheming, violent Fred Shapiro, who has always quarreled with his cousin George, share an obsession with money and a delight in intrigue. The actors and actresses, including Jenny, whom they hire to further their plans, are not particularly concerned about what they must do in order to earn their fees. The hireling detectives are quite willing to have George beaten or killed in order to protect their own interests.

Certainly the objective approach and the comic tone of the novel are partially responsible for the one-dimensional quality of Echenoz’s characters. Yet it is significant that the characters who are most fully realized are the two who are motivated by ideals: George, the determined lover, and Croconyan, the dedicated friend. Because they wear no masks, even in an objective novel they can be known as the schemers cannot.

Critical Context

Cherokee, the second of Jean Echenoz’s published novels and the first to be translated into English, won the Medicis Prize in 1983. Critics have described it as a detective story, a thriller, and a comic masterpiece with serious elements. That the setting is specifically French, from Parisian streets and highways to the French Alps, is pointed out by critics. This is not a modern novel which could have taken place anywhere that people are confused and unhappy. Yet the title of the book suggests also a kinship with American jazz, whose brief, intense phrases are the musical equivalent of the brief, intense, even violent scenes which make up the novel.

It is the contemporary film, however, which is the major influence on this work. The book opens like a film: A man walks out of a hanger and into a bar; minutes pass and suspense builds as Echenoz pans the scene in description; finally, without any real conversation, the man walks out of the bar, and the reader, caught, moves with him. The book ends with another familiar film scene: the funeral procession, the movement to a car, and the final frame, eyes in a rearview mirror and a brief question. Cherokee is a significant book because it brings new themes and techniques to an earlier form and because it successfully employs film techniques and conventions in the novel genre.

Bibliography

McCarthy, Patrick. “Playing with the Parrot,” in The Times Literary Supplement. October 14, 1983, p. 1142.

McGee, Celia. “Nice Guy, Private Eye,” in The New York Times Book Review. XCII (September 20, 1987), p. 31.

Thiher, Allen. Review in World Literature Today. LVIII (Spring, 1984), p. 232.