If you think graphic novels are poor cousins to the real thing or intended for adolescents, you will be surprised by this first English translation of Hubert (author) and Kerascoet (illustrator). Originally published as two separate works, The Virgin In The Bordello and Blood on Their Hands, this tale of Paris in the 1930s is full of mystery, charm and sophistication.
A faceless murderer, "The Killer of the Dances" is on the loose, preying on the newly minted working girls of the postwar era who frequent dance halls and pleasure palaces with their new found freedom and pocket money. Among them are Blanche, a timid, hardworking orphan and her fun loving friend Agathe, who share a tiny flat as they eke out their living as maids. It is the iconoclastic
Agathe who remarks that the Church must be happy to have a killer illustrating their sermons for them. When Agathe is killed by a stray gunshot from the next flat, a distraught Blanche cannot convince the police or her employer that a 
crime has been committed. They dismiss it as a suicide and Blanche is fired from her job.
crime has been committed. They dismiss it as a suicide and Blanche is fired from her job.Desperate to find work, Blanche is hired at the Pompadour Hotel, actually a house of prostitution, where she wears the black and white uniform of a maid but is forced to fend off the advances of the customers, including the Chief of Police - hence the nickname Miss 'Don't Touch Me.'
The delicious plot unfolds with realistic touches; the girls are taken in a paddy wagon for mandatory medical tests and the great chanteuse Josephine Baker makes an appearance, helping Blanche on the trail of the killers. At one point, upon discovering a tunnel that leads to an old convent cellar where the killers hide, Josephine touches a drop of blood on the stone floor, commenting, "I'd be surprised if this were the blood of Christ."
The illustrations are witty and knowing about traditions in French art, too. Street scenes evoke the works of Manet and Caillebotte, dramatic moments borrow the palette of the Fauves, and the characters are tart, saucy, and soo familiar looking. Madelene Mommepuy and Sebastien Cosset work together as the illustration team known as Kerascoet. They adopte
d as their signature the name of Mommepuy's home town in Brittany.
The delicious plot unfolds with realistic touches; the girls are taken in a paddy wagon for mandatory medical tests and the great chanteuse Josephine Baker makes an appearance, helping Blanche on the trail of the killers. At one point, upon discovering a tunnel that leads to an old convent cellar where the killers hide, Josephine touches a drop of blood on the stone floor, commenting, "I'd be surprised if this were the blood of Christ."
The illustrations are witty and knowing about traditions in French art, too. Street scenes evoke the works of Manet and Caillebotte, dramatic moments borrow the palette of the Fauves, and the characters are tart, saucy, and soo familiar looking. Madelene Mommepuy and Sebastien Cosset work together as the illustration team known as Kerascoet. They adopte
d as their signature the name of Mommepuy's home town in Brittany.
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