“The Arrest”, by Dan Franck: a story of betrayals – Benzine Magazine

In his very beautiful autobiographical story, “The Arrest”, the writer and screenwriter Dan Franck looks back on a critical moment in his life, the betrayal of a friend linked to Action Direct, which will eventually lead him to prison.

Writer and screenwriter for numerous films and series, And Frank experienced, around the age of 30, a somewhat complicated episode in his life. A period about which he never really spoke, which takes us back to the year 1984, when he spent 40 days in prison.

For a long time, he wondered whether or not it was necessary to mention this period during which he was taken into police custody, questioned at length by the police, then imprisoned in La Santé prison in Paris. And then the decades passed, and And Frank finally decided to leave this “secret” buried somewhere deep in his memory, before it resurfaces… on his Wikipedia entry.

So, rather than others discovering his past on the internet, that he had been convicted of criminal conspiracy in connection with the terrorist group Action Directe, And Frank finally decided to write a book. Because only his closest friends knew about this story which he carried for a long time like a burden. He who during his detention, in 1984, blackened entire pages to recount his confinement, his questions, his suffering, without ever doing anything about it, in the end, despite the insistence of his friend Françoise Verny who told him one day: “if you don’t want to spend 10 years with this story, write a book. »

This book, And Frank finally wrote it, and he published it today to tell how, on his 32nd birthday, October 17, 1984, he was arrested and imprisoned (following an anonymous letter), accused of complicity with members of ‘Action Direct. More precisely, one of his best friends at the time, named in the book simply “the boy” – a few searches on the internet will easily allow us to find his identity – sublet the studio of And Frank to members of the terrorist group and also participated in banditry actions including “The shooting on Avenue Trudaine” which left two law enforcement officers dead. But, out of solidarity, and also probably because he did not have a high opinion of the Police at that time, And Frank decided not to denounce anyone, to protect his friends during his interrogations. He will pay a high price.

It is a book in the form of an investigation into the past that offers us here And Frankremembering his interrogations at “36 quai des orfèvres”, his associations at the time, the days and nights spent in prison, receiving letters of support from his friends, but also from Rika Zaraifor whom he served as a “pen writer” for his successful books on plants.

Impossible to remain indifferent to the writer’s story, to not understand the trap in which he was trapped, he who thought he could play and win the lying poker game in which he was engaged with the Police, but who, without knowing it , was always one step late, especially for “the Bordeaux guy”, the cop who questioned him incessantly for weeks. A man he would decide to meet many decades later, to get clarification on the questions he still asked himself, in particular: who sent this anonymous letter denouncing him?

A strong novel where it is about friendships, convictions, but also betrayals, between childhood friends, with the pain of having been fooled by a man in whom he completely trusted and who turned out to be an outstanding manipulator.
And Frank tells all of this with enormous sincerity and lucidity, hiding nothing of the doubts that plagued him, of the errors that he may have made, out of naivety or kindness, or quite simply out of friendship, out of loyalty.

Benoit RICHARD

The arrest
Narrated by Dan Franck
Publisher: Grasset
304 pages – 20€
Publication date: September 27, 2023