This year, cruises will be offered during the Quais du Polar festival in conjunction with the Bateaux Lyonnais. – Lyonnais boats
- Grande mass du roman noir, the Quais du Polar festival will take place this year from July 2 to 4 in Lyon.
- The organizers, forced to adapt to the sanitary measures, set out in search of new places and mostly in the open air for this 17th edition.
- On the program: “expert buses”, “literary cruises” on the waters of the Saône and more conferences on rooftops.
“Return to life”. For its 17th edition, the Quais du polar festival has been forced to reinvent itself in order to cope with the sanitary measures imposed. For the first time, it will be held in summer, from July 2 to 4 to be precise. But this is not the main novelty. Having to deal with restricted reception gauges, the organizers set out in search of new meeting places, which promise to be just as attractive as each other.
“To take advantage of the summer period, we will be much more present outdoors”, announces Hélène Fischbah, director of the festival. While some conferences will still be held in the salons of the Hôtel-de-Ville or in the cozy setting of the Chapelle-de-la-Trinité, most will take place outdoors in a sometimes unusual setting.
Literary cruises and expert buses
The Odeon of the ancient theater of Fourvière will host on July 4, for example, one of the two Great Black Dictations which will be read for the occasion by Franck Thilliez. But be careful, you will have to reserve to make sure you have a place in the stands.
Six “literary cruises” will also be on the program. For the public, it will be a question of boarding the “Bateaux Lyonnais” in order to sail on the waters of the Saône and interact with the writers who will lend themselves to the game, such as Florence Aubenas, RJ Ellory, Michel Bussi or even Arnaldur Indriðason.
Another novelty: “the expert bus”. Readers will be able to sit on the roofs of Lyon’s double-decker buses, usually transporting tourists, to experience unique excursions all revolving around the theme of criminal anthropology and scientific investigations. The participants will thus meet “those who live on a daily basis what makes us shiver in thrillers”. They will have the chance to hear a specialist in crime scenes, but also the commissioner Christophe Gavat (author of thrillers by the way), court columnists and journalists specializing in various facts.
Conversations on the terrace, dedications under the trees
The terraces of Lyon will be associated with the festival for the first time. Intimate meetings conducive to exchanges between authors and readers will be organized on various terraces in the city center (those of the Cintra restaurant and the Globe and Cécile hotel), on the rooftops of the College Hotel and Maison Nô and on the barge La Barge.
Do not miss the literary walks that will take you in the footsteps of Frédéric Dard, whose centenary of his birth this year is being celebrated, and in the footsteps of the Watchmaker of Saint-Paul, as a tribute to Bertrand Tavernier died in March. As for the big investigation, it will take place this time over two weeks (until July 18). The detectives will have to take two routes in their entirety in order to solve the riddle that will be offered to them. They will in fact have the possibility of carrying out their investigations for several days.
Finally, the “large bookstore” of the thriller (a meeting of 10 independent booksellers) will take up residence on the banks of the Rhône while authors for young people will dedicate their works under the trees of the Tête d’Or park. Note that the price of the Quais du Polar-20 minutes will be presented on July 2 at 12:30 p.m. at the Palais de la Bourse.