This thesis contends that the popular crime fiction of Didier Daeninckx offers valuable insight into French society as his texts often centre on issues such as France’s colonial past, the lasting impacts of both World Wars, and a variety of grassroots social concerns, such as the threats posed by nuclear energy and laissez-faire attitudes by the State in relation to unemployment, mental illness, or drug abuse. While I reference Daeninckx’s body of work throughout my thesis, the Inspecteur Cadin series (consisting of four novels and one collection of short stories) are the principal works examined. My thesis extends the work of Max Silverman and Michael Rothberg, who have used their respective theories of palimpsestic memory and multidirectional memory to examine one of Daeninckx’s most discussed texts, Meurtres pour mémoire (1984). Meurtres pour mémoire is the only novel from the series to have received any significant attention from scholars to date. From my analysis of Daeninckx’s texts, it is clear that the author frequently creates palimpsestic passages within his works to argue for a non-competitive commemoration of the past by highlighting the similarities between historic traumas, which at first often appear disparate from one another. My thesis also identifies how the Inspecteur Cadin series as a whole is hybrid in nature. On the one hand, literary movements not typically associated with popular fiction such as surrealism and abstract art are strongly present in some of the works. Yet, on the other hand, the Inspecteur Cadin series frequently evokes tropes associated with hardboiled crime fiction and makes recurring references to popular culture such as French music and cinema. As part of my research, I travelled to Paris in 2017 and conducted an hour-long interview with Daeninckx in his home. I draw on this new primary source throughout my thesis, a transcription of which is included in the Appendix.