"His books are all action, unfolding with a laconic efficiency that would make his killers proud."—The EconomistMartin Terrier is a hired killer who wants out of the game—so he can settle down and marry his childhood sweetheart. After all, that's why he took up this profession! But "the company" won't let him go: they have other plans. Once again, the gunman must assume the prone firing position. A tour de force, this violent tale shatters as many illusion...

"His books are all action, unfolding with a laconic efficiency that would make his killers proud."—The EconomistBusinessman Georges Gerfaut witnesses a murder—and is pursued by the killers. His conventional life knocked off the rails, Gerfaut turns the tables and sets out to track down his pursuers. Along the way, he learns a thing or two about himself. . . . Manchette—masterful stylist, ironist, and social critic—limns the cramped lives of professionals i...

Inspired by the works of Dashiell Hammett, No Room at the Morgue is Jean-Patrick Manchette's unparalleled take on the private eye novel — fierce, politically inflected, and finely rendered by the haunting, pitch-black prose for which the author is famed.No Room at the Morgue came out after Jean-Patrick Manchette had transformed French crime fiction with such brilliantly plotted, politically charged, unrelentingly violent tales as Nada and...

A New York Review Books OriginalWhether 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 interests against each other the better, as always, to make a k...

Eugéne Tarpon, the private-eye protagonist from Manchette’s No Room at the Morgue, appears once more for a characteristically brisk and brutal story full of unexpected comedy and feeling.Private eye Eugéne Tarpon is back to sleeping in his office, waiting for a paying job to turn up. Then he gets a call from a sometime contact in the police department. He's referring a nice old lady—a distant relative—to Tarpon; her daughter's gone missing and, the copy sa...

The debut novel of a pioneering author of French crime thrillers.Mean, arrogant, naive, 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 prominent opposition leader from a third-world African nation in the throes of a postcolonial civil w...

This tour de force political thriller, told in Manchette's signature noir style, follows a group of far left extremists in the throes of post-1968 disillusionment.The thrill of 1968 is long over, and the heavy fog of the 1970s has settled in. In Paris, however, the Nada gang—or groupuscule—still retains a militant attachment to its revolutionary dreams. Bringing together an anarchist orphaned by the Spanish Civil War, a Communist veteran of the French resistance, a...

An NYRB Classics OriginalWinner of the French-American Foundation Translation Prize for FictionMichel 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 a serious ulcer. Michel hires Julie to look after Peter. And he hires Thompson to...

"His books are all action, unfolding with a laconic efficiency that would make his killers proud."—The Economist"There's not a superfluous word or overdone effect . . . one of the last cool, compact and shockingly original crime novels Manchette left as his legacy to modern noir fiction."—New York TimesMovie-tie in publication. "The Gunman" stars Sean Penn, Javier Bardem, Idris Elba, and Ray Winstone, and is directed by Pi...

Set in Cuba's Sierra Maestra in the 1950s, in the days leading up to the Revolution--Manchette's unfinished masterpiece with a fearless female protagonist.Out of the wreckage of World War II swaggers Ivory Pearl, so named (rhymes with girl) by some British soldiers who made her their mascot, a mere kid, orphaned, survivor of God knows what, but fluent in French, English, smoking, and drinking. In Berlin, Ivy meets Samuel Farakhan, a rich closeted intelligence offic...

"Ivory Pearl" is the final work by the French master of noir fiction, Jean-Patrick Manchette. But this wide-reaching geopolitical thriller, blending action and adventure, was only known to readers in its unfinished form, as written by Manchette before his passing in 1995. Now, using his father's notes, Doug Headline has finally put together the full tale, alongside artist Max Cabanes. Together, they have brought Ivory Pearl to vivid life in a graphic novel not to be missed.

"Ivory Pearl" is the final work by the French master of noir fiction, Jean-Patrick Manchette. But this wide-reaching geopolitical thriller, blending action and adventure, was only known to readers in its unfinished form, as written by Manchette before his passing in 1995. Now, using his father's notes, Doug Headline has finally put together the full tale, alongside artist Max Cabanes. Together, they have brought Ivory Pearl to vivid life in a graphic novel not to be missed.