- Pierre Nord
Pierre Nord, real name André Léon Brouillard (
15 April ,1900 -13 December ,1985 ), was a French writer,spy and resistance member.Brouillard was born in
Le Cateau-Cambrésis . He participated in theFirst World War as a resistance fighter and in 1916 was arrested by the Germans at Saint-Quentin, condemned to death and later pardoned.He was educated at
Saint-Cyr (1920-1922), Superior War School (1932-1934) and Free School of Political Science. As armoured troops' officer, he took part in the campaign against Rif rebels inMorocco and there earned the distinction ofknight of theLegion d'Honneur .In 1939, Brouillard was appointed chief of intelligence of 9th and 10th Armies. During German invasion of 1940, he was again captured, escaped and became commander of one of the most active units of French resistance. He saw the end of the
Second World War as acolonel and was awarded numerous military decorations.In 1936, Brouillard published his first espionage novel, "Double crime sur la ligne Maginot" (Double Crime on the
Maginot Line ), under the pseudonym of Pierre Nord. The tense and complicated plot revolved around the hunt for a murderous German spy who operated in one of the forts of theMaginot Line . The spy, masquerading as alieutenant of French army, was neutralized by ingenious trap set by Deuxième Bureau' operativeCaptain Pierre Ardant. (Curiously, chief protagonists of Nord's novels almost invariably bear first name of Pierre). The "Double crime" was followed by "Terre d'angoisse" (Land of Anguish, 1937), which described the struggle between the German and French secret services during the First World War. The hero of the story, Gabriel Gabrio, under the alias of Lieutenant Heim penetratedKaizer 's army.In 1946, Brouillard left military service to take up writing full-time. As Pierre Nord, he became a prolific and popular author of spy fiction. His novels are characterized by realistic and intricate plots skillfully woven into both
Cold War and Second World War settings. Many feature Colonel Dubois, the astute, veteran chief of French counter-espionage. "Sixième colonne" (Sixth Column, 1955) deals with the ostensive defection to the East of a French bacteriologist and the search for him carried out by his brother, alieutenant colonel in the medical service, Pierre Rocher. The threat ofbiological warfare is again addressed in "Espionnage à l'italienne" (Espionage a la Italian, 1963), where a French discoverer of a deadly bacillus disappears in Italy and is sought for by the French, American and Russian intelligence services. In "Pas de scandale a l'ONU" (No Scandal at the UN, 1962), the son of a murdered French diplomat, trying to avenge the death of his father who worked for Colonel Dubois, stumbles upon a conspiracy against world peace orchestrated by some third world countries. In "Le Kawass d'Ankara" (The Kawass from Ankara, 1967), the Allied secret services in 1944 dispatch an agent, Pierre Frontin, to Turkey in a desperate effort to discredit vital information that fell into German hands. "Le 13e suicidé" (The Thirteenth Who Committed Suicide, 1971) features a high-ranking Russian defector who reveals that many leading figures in West German intelligence service are in fact Soviet agents. When several of them take their own lives, Colonel Dubois begins to question the Russian's revelations. This novel was adopted into a film "Le Serpent" ("Night Flight from Moscow ", 1973) starringYul Brynner ,Henry Fonda andDirk Bogarde . "Le canal de las Americas" (The Canal of the Americas, 1973) is a political intrigue set in a fictitious Latin American republic of Costaraguay. Altogether Nord authored nearly 80 novels.He also wrote non-fiction. Between 1946 and 1949, Nord published a three-volume account of
Free French intelligence actions during Second World War under the title "Mes Camarades sont morts" (My Comrades are Dead) that won the Grand Prix Vérité. "L'intoxication" (The Deception), an analysis of the clandestine war of secret services, appeared in 1971.In 1957, Nord moved from France to the principality of
Monaco , where he lived until his death.External links
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