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Title: The Prone Gunman (City Lights Noir) by Jean-Patrick Manchette, James Brook ISBN: 0-87286-402-2 Publisher: City Lights Publishers Pub. Date: 01 August, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 (2 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: The Bleak World of French Noir
Comment: French crime writer Manchette's final novel was published in 1981 and now finally appears in English over twenty years later. Unmistakably influenced by Jean-Pierre Melville's brilliant 1967 film "Le Samourai", the story is about Martin, a professional hit man who wants to quit the business and return home to claim his childhood love. However, the mysterious government agency who hires him wants him to do just one last job... Of course this is an old story, and naturally Martin finds it's not so easy to just walk away. Having come from a miserable small town upbringing, he's proven himself in the big bad world and just wants to retire to a quiet beach somewhere with his old girlfriend. But this is the noir world of shattered illusions-as one character puts it, "You're dreaming, there are no more desert islands!" It doesn't take too much reading between the lines to uncover Manchette's larger political metaphor in the story of a kid who hires himself out to do someone else's killing for ten years only to find it's tainted him forever. The book is brutally dark, but if you like the whole nihilist crime thing, it's worth the two hours it takes to read. The lean story unfolds in rapid, flat prose without an ounce of sentimentality and it's not hard to see why Manchette quit writing after this. If your world view is that bleak, there's not a whole lot else to say, is there?
Rating: 5
Summary: Brilliant and Disturbing
Comment: As one reviewer summed it up, this is Dashiel Hammett meets Guy Debord, and it's true; flat, spare prose with a sense of existential nihilism from which there is no escape. Fast, rough, violent reading, told in a matter-of-fact procedural manner. The ending is telegraphed rather obviously, but this is first rate work, and if you're into violent noirs, you should read it. What a film it would make, in the right hands!
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Title: Three to Kill by Jean-Patrick Manchette, Donald Nicholson-Smith ISBN: 0872863956 Publisher: Noir Pub. Date: 01 January, 2002 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
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Title: The Terra-Cotta Dog: An Inspector Montalbano Mystery by Andrea Camilleri, Stephen Sartarelli ISBN: 0142002631 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 25 March, 2003 List Price(USD): $5.99 |
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Title: The Shape of Water by Andrea Camilleri ISBN: 0142002399 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 01 November, 2002 List Price(USD): $5.99 |
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Title: The Snack Thief (Inspector Montalbano Mysteries) by Andrea Camilleri ISBN: 0142003492 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 28 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: The Voice of the Violin: An Inspector Montalbano Mystery (Inspector Montalbano Mysteries) by Andrea Camilleri, Stephen Sartarelli ISBN: 0670031437 Publisher: Viking Books Pub. Date: 06 November, 2003 List Price(USD): $21.95 |
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