Edited by Nicolas Delestre and Amos Frappa.
We think we know the “Brigades du Tigre”: their bowler hats, their automobiles, and their handlebar moustaches. These are all images popularized by the cult TV series of the 1970s and 1980s, which gave the brigades a name far better known today than their original designation. But beyond this television drama, what do we really know of their history?
In 1907, the mobile criminal investigation brigades were created at the instigation of Interior Minister Georges Clemenceau and Célestin Hennion, director of the Sûreté générale. They claimed to embody a modern police force, responsible for the most complex criminal cases. Their popularity grew quickly, thanks in particular to the press, which found in their investigations material to fill its crime-report columns. But behind this façade, far lesser-known activities were taking place, which contradicted the functions originally assigned to these “Brigades du Tigre”.
Laurent López offers us an account made up of legend, major criminal cases, and previously unpublished archives. From the Belle Époque to the interwar period, and on to the Vichy regime, these police officers shaped French history even as they lived through the crises, scandals, and threats that shook the country over the decades. It is a history that is still largely overlooked, yet whose memory has paradoxically remained deeply rooted in the French imagination.
