Alarm fifty resounds, and the worker responsible for the maintenance and
winding of the antique clocks of an old man who thinks this is the
perfect time to change into the electronic era, is fired without obvious
reason. Our hero is left adrift and with so much spare time he simply
doesn’t know what to do with himself.  And so he becomes a private
detective. He has to start with next to nothing: no licence, no weapon,
no experience. But he has his books. He makes his home in an pokey
Parisian garret, with only a few shelves filled with detective novels of
which the heroes seem to make a mockery of him. Choucas is no Philip
Marlowe, that’s for sure. But even though he doesn’t carry a Luger 38,
he can use his fists, his head and his biting sarcasm just as well as
Chandler’s hero.