An exciting experience of cartography: revealing some hidden dimensions in detective novels. L'Ombre du vent by C.R. Zafon and Trilogy Fabio Montale by J.-C. Izzo

This article is aimed at accounting for two urban “literary” essays, based on the city of Barcelona from L’Ombre du vent written by Zafon in 2004, and the city of Marseille from La Trilogie Fabio Montale (Izzo, 1996). These two writers have in common to have given the two cities -they use as settings- the role of the “third man”, a character always present through the listing of accurate toponyms and well-detailed itinaries. Well-located, all these names of districts, streets, avenues, and in both cases, places where you eat out, set up a sensitive and poetic geography which reports two urban and parallel structures, that can be reflected with an experimental cartography.