His novel La serpe is on the real life crime story story of Henri Girard, suspected of a triple murder by billhook (serpe) in 1941, in his family manor in Escoire, Dordogne, occupied France. Acquitted partly because of the great speech by his lawyer
Maurice Garçon. Girard later went to live in South America and came back penniless with his novel that made him famous written under the pseudonym of Georges Arnaud (II)'.