Jean-Patrick Manchette

A New York Review Books Original
Whether you call her a coldhearted grifter or the soul of modern capitalism, there’s no question that Aimée is a killer and a more than professional one. Now she’s set her eyes on a backwater burg—where, while posing as an innocent (albeit drop-dead gorgeous) newcomer to town, she means to sniff out old grudges and engineer new opportunities, deftly playing different people and different...

"Michel Hartog, a sometime architect, is a powerful businessman and famous philanthropist whose immense fortune has just grown that much greater following the death of his brother in an accident. Peter is his orphaned nephew--a spoiled brat. Julie is in an insane asylum. Thompson is a hired gunman with an ulcerated gut. Michel, known for his kindly interest in the disadvantaged, hires Julie to look after Peter. And he hires Thompson to kill them....

Tardi's nonstop pulp-action style propels Manchette's hardboiled crime stories with a pulsing energy that will keep you on the edge to the end. Plus, this volume offers a bonus 21-page unfinished story by Manchette and Tardi and an introduction to another uncompleted story, both appearing in English for the first time--Back cover.

"Nada is the most overtly political of Jean-Patrick Manchette's dark thrillers, a critique of the terrorism that tempted a sliver of the ultra-left in France (and elsewhere) in the wake of the disillusions of 1968. The novel chronicles the kidnapping and eventual killing of an American ambassador by an anarcho-terrorist group who have espoused armed struggle. A rough equivalent to this story might be the saga of the ill-fated Symbionese Liberation...

"Mean, arrogant, naïve, sadistic on occasion, the young Henri Butron records his life story on tape just before death catches up with him. A death passed off as a suicide by his killers, French secret service agents who need to hush up their role-and Butron's-in the kidnapping, torture, and murder of a leading opposition leader from a third-world African nation in the throes of postcolonial civil war. The N'Gustro Affair is a thinly veiled retelling...

Manon 70: A woman worships the luxurious lifestyle she has attained by sleeping with wealthy men until she falls in love with a poor reporter. Le choc: A hired killer determined to retire flees to the country to hide from his bosses. There he succumbs to a beautiful woman.

"George Gerfaut, aimless young executive and desultory family man, witnesses a murder and finds himself sucked into a spiral of violence involving an exiled war criminal and two hired assassins. Adapting to the exigencies of his new life on the run with shocking ease, Gerfaut abandons his comfortable middle-class life for several months (including a sojourn in the countryside after an attempt to ride the rails turns spectacularly bad) until, joined...