He was born in 1993 and he drinks beer. No, he's not too young... He turned 40 on the year 2000, on march 22nd, more precisely. His name is Gabriel Lecouvreur, he lives in Paris, in the 11th "arrondissement" (district). His favorite bar is on Ledru-Rollin avenue, "Le Pied de Porc à la Sainte-Scolasse", named after a famous meal whose major ingredient is pork-foot. The rest of the receipe is kept secret, of course. The boss' name is Gérard, his wife is Maria. They have a Romanian chief, Vlad. Gabriel's girlfriend his "Cheryl". Well, it's not her real name, but who cares? She has her own (salon de coiffure) Popincourt St. Gabriel's nickname is (le Poulpe), "The Squid", because he has two too long arms...and he only drinks beer.

In fact, Gabriel Lecouvreur aka "Le Poulpe" is a hero of a set of novels started by Jean-Bernard Pouy, one of the most famous French police novel writer. In fact, the concept of "Le Poulpe" is quite special. If you follow the guidelines created by Jean-Bernard Pouy, you may write one (and only one) "Le Poulpe" novel. And anybody may send his manuscript. I mean anybody. Of course, the first writers were reckoned authors, friends of J-B Pouy, but Baleine Editions published loads of unknown writers from 1994 to 2002. About 200 novels with the recurrent characters described in the guidelines were published. And one of the most important guidelines as a feature of Gabriel Lecouvreur is "he only drinks beer".

Why beer only? Curiously, it's actually political. You may not know SAS, a French-spy-story novel series. The author and editor of SAS is of right-wing, nearby extreme-right-wing political side, and in his novels he expresses racists, sexists opinions. And the "prince Malko", SAS hero, usually drinks expensive french wines in his castle, listening to classical music surrounded by beautiful enslaved top-model-like women. Jean-Bernard Pouy is radically against this kind of literature, so he decided to create a "pop" hero, libertarian, free-thinker, drinking beer only, to get closer to the middle-class or lower-class society. Usually, "The Squid" solves mysteries he reads in the newspapers, some stories he thought were "dirty" or "unclean". He fights racists, fascists, sectarian religious movements or any other person he considers "immoral" according to his opinion. This crazy adventure ended in 2002 but only because Baleine Editions ceased activity, due to bankruptcy.

In the novels, Gabriel traveled a lot, from Central Europe to Africa, he even went to Québec. And of course, during his trips, he discovered beers from the whole world, beers the authors knew and/or enjoyed. But sometimes you don't need to travel that far and discover an unknown Belgian beer, do you?

A few further facts:

• In 1998, a movie based on "Le Poulpe" was released, with Jean-Pierre Daroussin as Gabriel.
• You may read about Gabriel Lecouvreur on his fansite. Some books are reviewed there and you may read the synopsis of all the main characters.