French author and detective of the Sûreté nationale (national police). In the fight against organized crime, he claimed to have been involved in 567 arrests. He published twenty-eight books.
He started as a singer, but his fledgling musical career was interrupted by the German invasion of 1940. To make a living, he took a job as a store detective. In 1943, he joined the Sûreté nationale as an Inspector to avoid being shipped to a forced labour detail. Assigned to hunt members of the Resistance, he instead helped partisans escape from occupied France. He deserted in 1944, only days before the D-Day invasion.
Upon the liberation of France in August, he was reinstated to the Sûreté nationale and assigned to enforce France’s abortion laws. The next year, he was transferred to a homicide unit.
On 4 September 1947, he was assigned to capture the escaped murderer, Emile Buisson, whom he captured eating lunch at a restaurant on 10 June 1950. Borniche was rewarded with a promotion to Chief inspector and a 30,000 Franc bonus.
He retired in 1956 and formed his own detective agency in Paris. His first set of memoirs, Flic Story, became the basis of a 1975 film featuring Alain Delon as Borniche, portraying Borniche’s real-life pursuit of Emile Buisson.
Roger Borniche lived for many years in California before returning to France in 2015. He died on 16 June 2020 at age 101 in Cannes.
Link to Wikipedia biography