After earning a Bachelor of Arts degree and entering the École Normale Supérieure, he started studying music, particularly piano and composition, at the conservatory; he was a big fan of jazz.
He spent part of the period of the German occupation of France in Marseille, which became the setting for his first novel after the war, Hors Jeu (lit.
He then wrote and published Evangeline (1948), which he dedicated to his friend, writer Michel Perrin, and Attentat à la pudeur (lit.
Meanwhile, he also wrote screenplays and dialogues for the TV series Commissaire Moulin and Marie Pervenche.
Later, under the pseudonym Paul Vance, he published two crime novels for Le Masque [fr] (lit.