Marcel Allain

Born in Paris on September 15, 1885, Marcel Allain was a French writer remembered above all for the Fantômas series, created with Pierre Souvestre in 1911. The character quickly became one of the great figures of French popular fiction: elusive, theatrical, and endlessly adaptable.

After Souvestre's death, Allain continued writing Fantômas novels on his own, keeping the series alive for decades. His career was closely tied to the world of serialized storytelling, where speed, suspense, and cliffhangers mattered as much as literary polish.

He died on August 25, 1969, in Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Today he is still associated with the dark glamour and imaginative excess of early crime fiction, and with a villain whose influence reached far beyond the original books.