The character of André Veillut is based on Maurice Papon, a French police chief and later a politician and industrial leader. Papon served as a senior official during World War II, during which time he collaborated with the Nazis, deporting more than 1,500 Jewish people from France to German concentration camps. He was also active in implementing the anti-Semitic laws enacted by the Vichy Government.
After the war, he continued to work as a police official and held several government posts. In October 1961, while working as Prefect of Police in Paris, he oversaw the murder of dozens of Algerians peacefully protesting a curfew. This is the protest with which Murder in Memoriam begins.
Evidence of Papon’s involvement in the Holocaust came to light in 1981. After years of investigations and legal battles, Papon went to trial in October 1997. He was convicted a year later, and given a ten-year prison term.
Murder in Memoriam was published in French in 1984, fourteen years before Papon’s conviction. In this novel, Didier Daeninckx located the link between the two murders in its history that France had yet to confront, more than a decade before those crimes were officially acknowledged. The novel is widely held to have played a part in bringing Papon to justice.