Synopses & Reviews
Businessman 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 in a neo-conservative world.
Jean-Patrick Manchette (1942—1995) rescued the French crime novel from the grip of stodgy police procedurals—restoring the noir edge by virtue of his post-1968 leftism. Today, Manchette is a totem to the generation of French mystery writers who came in his wake. Jazz saxophonist, political activist, and screen writer, Manchette was influenced as much by Guy Debord as by Gustave Flaubert.
Review
"A social satire cum suspense equally interested in dissecting everyday banalities and manufacturing thrills. Writing with economy, deadpan irony, and an eye for the devastating detail, Manchette spins pulp fiction into literature." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"The theme of paranoid man-on-the-run is a staple of B-thrillers, but the author shows such superb elan in handling the material that it almost seems as if he's the first to craft it....The occasional touches of dark humor recall Charles Willeford, the passages of sinewy prose the spare musculature of Richard Stark's early Parker novels. Manchette is a must for the reading lists of all noir fans." Publishers Weekly
Review
"[T]he author breathes new life into a popular noir formula....Manchette's left-wing politics drive the story in occasionally intrusive ways, but, ironically, what makes the tale come alive is the coldly impersonal narrative style, evoking both Camus and Jean-Paul Melville's exquisitely icy film Le Samurai." Bill Ott, Booklist
Review
"For Manchette and his generation of writers who followed him, the crime novel is no mere entertainment, but a means to strip bare the failures of society, ripping through veils of appearance, deceit, and manipulation to the greed and violence that are society's true engines." The Boston Globe
Review
"It's an old storyline, but Manchette tweaks it playfully, and to no predictable end. Neither Georges's class consciousness nor an appreciation for the yuppie good life are awakened by the experience, only insubstantial longings and a capability for brutality he didn't know he had." Ben Ehrenreich, The Village Voice
Review
"[W]onderful....Dark, ironic, funny, quickly paced, translated from the French, and very, very cool." Ann Romeo, MurderInk.com
Review
"From the first page of Three to Kill, from virtually any page of Manchette, you know right away you're in the hands of a master, and that the ride will be a rapid, unsettling, often terrifying one....Manchette's are lean, muscular books that deserve serious reading." James Sallis
Synopsis
Businessman 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. And what does he discover along the way?
French thriller writer Manchette masterful stylist, ironist, and social critic limns the cramped lives of professionals in a neo-conservative world.
Synopsis
"His books are all action, unfolding with a laconic efficiency that would make his killers proud."--The Economist
Businessman 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 in a neoconservative world.
"Manchette has appropriated and subverted the classic thriller with] descriptions of undiluted action, violence and suspense and] a perspective on evil, a disenchanted world of manipulation and fury. . . ."--Times Literary Supplement
"The petty exigencies of the classic thriller find themselves summarily reduced to cremains by the fiery blue jets of Jean-Patrick Manchette's concision, intelligence, tension, and style."--Jim Nisbet, author of Lethal Injection and Prelude to a Scream
"Manchette is a must for the reading lists of all noir fans. . . . Manchette deserves a higher profile among noir fans."--Publishers Weekly
"Manchette . . . performs miracles within this simple story. His style is very matter of fact, stark and almost cool like the jazz his hero or anti-hero Gerfaut devours at every opportunity. Yet in this short novel there is no lack of atmosphere, excitement, characters or descriptive writing, it is just the total lack of unnecessary material that makes the story seem so lean and mean."--Norman Price, EuroCrime
"A social satire cum suspense equally interested in dissecting everyday banalities and manufacturing thrills. Writing with economy, deadpan irony, and an eye for the devastating detail, Manchette spins pulp fiction into literature."--Kirkus Reviews
"While there isn't much that's obviously moral--in the good-versus-evil sense-- this novel] demonstrate s] why Manchette is hailed as the man who kicked the French crime novel or 'polar' out of the apolitical torpor into which it had fallen by the time he started publishing his 'neo-polars' in the 1970s. . . . Grim and cerebral as they feel, it's remarkable how comic--in an absurdist, laugh-or-you'll-cry way--these books are, as if Manchette had decided that poking fun at the products of the capitalist system were the fittest way to attack the system itself."--Jennifer Howard, Boston Review
"The pace is fast, the action sequences are superb, and the effect is just as striking as it must have been when the book was first published in 1976."--Laura Wilson, The Guardian
" T]he novel is brilliantly written, replete with allusions to art, literature, and music, papered with the very texture and furniture of our lives. Manchette is Camus on overdrive, at one and the same time white-hot, ice-cold. He deserves much the same attention."--James Sallis, Review of Contemporary Fiction
Jean-Patrick Manchette (1942--1995) rescued the French crime novel from the grip of stodgy police procedurals--restoring the noir edge by virtue of his post-1968 leftism. Today, Manchette is a totem to the generation of French mystery writers who came in his wake. Jazz saxophonist, political activist, and screen writer, Manchette was influenced as much by Guy Debord as by Gustave Flaubert. City Lights has published more of his work, including The Gunman.
Synopsis
First in English for Manchette, renovator of French noir; trenchant social critique laced with black humor.
About the Author
Jean-Patrick Manchette (1942-1995) was the author of 11 noir novels, of which Three To Kill is the first to be published in English. An amateur jazz saxophonist, one-time political activist and prolific TV screen writer and literary critic, Manchette renewed French noir in the post-1968 period and established the new genre of the néo-polar. His writing was influenced as much by Guy Debord as by Gustave Flaubert.