Rendez-vous en noir

I saw this series back on danish TV in the late 1970'ies and I (or rather, my teen-age sister) was intrigued by the appearance of a young and intense Daniel Auteuil. However, the whole story seemed very familiar to me, much like Régine Desforges' La Bicyclette Bleu resembles "Gone with the Wind". The crime novel "Nineteen Red Roses" by Torben Nielsen, 1973, contains the exact same plot, with the rather simple substitution of a bottle thrown off a plane by a hit-and-run driver with company. In Denmark, going on a fun plane ride would have been regarded as something from another planet in the seventies. The novel was quickly scripted and the film (same name) appeared in danish movie-houses in 1974. I should mention that I do not know if the aforesaid novel has a (french?) predecessor.