Jean Lartéguy (5 September 1920 in Maisons-Alfort – 23 February 2011) was the pen name of Jean Pierre Lucien Osty, a French writer, journalist, and former soldier. Larteguy is credited with first envisioning the "ticking time bomb" scenario of torture in his 1960 novel Les centurions. Lartéguy was born into what he called "one of those families of poor mountain peasants whose names are found inscribed on war memorials, but not in history books" in Maisons-Alfort, Val-de-Marne. Both his father ...