I’ve been humming and hahhing about this for a long time, gentle reader; do I want to give myself yet another challenge alongside the Agatha Christies, the James Bonds, plus all the usual theatre, reviewing and travel stuff? And do I really want to do it about Paul Berna, of whom I expect most of my readers won’t have a clue who he is?

But I came back to the two main reasons why I’m tempted to do this challenge. Firstly, he’s a writer who represents a small, but very happy part of my childhood memories. At the age of somewhere under ten, I read both A Hundred Million Francs and The Clue of the Black Cat and loved them both – in fact, I think The Clue of the Black Cat is still my favourite children’s book. I wanted to read more, but the school library where I borrowed those books didn’t have any other of his work; and then Agatha Christie took over my interests, and Paul Berna got slightly forgotten about. So I want to right that wrong by re-reading all his books and recording my thoughts about them.

Secondly, although A Hundred Million Francs is relatively well-known, and has only recently come back into print, there’s very little critical opinion online about his books as a whole. Many of them are listed on Goodreads but have never even received just one reader’s comment! Google his name and a random book title and, like as not, 99% plus of the hits will be a link to where you can buy second-hand copies of it. There’s the occasional reference to his works in a few random blog posts; one French reviewer has written a few words (very few) about a handful of his books. But no one has gone into any kind of detail about him. I sense that my time has come! And if I can interest just one person into discovering his books for the first time, or re-reading some childhood favourites, then I’ll be a very happy chap.

In case you don’t know, Paul Berna was a pseudonym used by Jean-Marie-Edmond Sabran. He was French, and lived from 1908 to 1994. He also used the noms-de-plume Bernard Deleuze, Paul Gerrard and Joel Audrenn, as well as writing under his own name, Jean Sabran. He used the name Paul Berna for his books for children, and that’s where he realised his greatest success; Paul was his father’s name, and Berna was the surname of his German great-grandmother. As Berna, he wrote 26 children’s novels, including a few for very young children, two science-fiction oriented (although still featuring young people) and three that were never translated into English. The other 16 I have hunted down in second-hand bookshops over the years, and more recently online. I probably should buy the two science-fiction books too!

So here’s the deal. I’m going to re-read A Hundred Million Francs, as that was not only his biggest seller, but also the first of his books that really took off – published in 1955. And then I’ll write an appreciation of it. It may be, gentle reader, that this is the one book of his that you too have read; if so, I’d love you to re-read it too, and then we can compare notes. All being well, I’ll then move on to his next book, The Street Musician, and so on. Maybe I’ll even go back to those earlier science fiction books – we’ll see. For years, all his books were out of print; so if you want to join me in this quest, you may have to spend some time in second-hand bookshops or on Amazon or Ebay. In the meantime, A Hundred Million Francs is only 170 or so pages of paperback and if I remember rightly, it’s a cracking read, so we should get through it quite quickly. Let’s give Paul Berna the online acclaim and attention he deserves!