Jean-Patrick Manchette's Books

Ivory Pearl

By: Jean-Patrick Manchette

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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 officer. Farakhan proposes to adopt her and help her to become the photographer she wants to be; his relationship to her will provide a certain cover for him. And she is an asset. The deal is struck... 1956: Ivy has seen every conflict the postwar world has on offer, from Vietnam to East Berlin, and has published her photographs in slick periodicals, but she is sick to death of death and bored with life and love. It’s time for a break. Ivy heads to Cuba, the Sierra Maestra. History, however, doesn’t take vacations. Ivory Pearl was Jean-Patrick Manchette’s last book, representing a new turn in his writing. It was to be the first of a series of ambitious historical thrillers about the “wrong times” we live in. Though left unfinished when Manchette died, the book, whose full plot has been filled in here from the author’s notes, is a masterpiece of bold suspense and black comedy: chilling, caustic, and perfectly choreographed.

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Page Count

209

Publisher

New York Review of Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

1681372118

ISBN 13

9781681372112

The Prone Gunman

By: Jean-Patrick Manchette

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The Prone Gunman

By: Jean-Patrick Manchette

Detective and mystery stories. First UK publication of a french classic from 1981. Lean, mean and dangerous tale of a hitman who tries to quit his violent profession. Clinical, deadpan narration. 'There's no a superfluous word or overdone effect.... one of the last cool, compact and shockingly original crime novels".

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Page Count

160

Publisher

Serpent's Tail

Published Date

ISBN 10

1852424745

ISBN 13

9781852424749

The Gunman

By: Jean-Patrick Manchette

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The Gunman

By: Jean-Patrick Manchette

Deadly professional assassin Martin Terrier returns to Paris after his latest job determined to get out of the game. Ten years ago he made a promise to return to his childhood sweetheart in the south of France. But circumstances put Martin's attempted retirement on hold: a key target is flying in to Paris, and there is only one man fit for the task of eliminating him. As Martin flees southwards, desperate to return to the crushing mediocrity of life in a backwater town, he finds his former employers will stop at nothing to regain his services for one last job.Bursting with Gallic irony and visceral brutality, The Gunman (originally published in English as The Prone Gunman) is a shocking and sardonic masterpiece from the late, great master of the French crime novel, J-P Manchette.

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160

Published Date

ISBN 10

1781253919

ISBN 13

9781781253915

Three to Kill

By: Jean-Patrick Manchette

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Three to Kill

By: Jean-Patrick Manchette

Late one night in Paris, travelling salesman Georges Gerfaut stops to help an injured motorist to hospital. Three days later, while Gerfaut is on holiday with his wife and daughters, he is attacked by two men. Quickly realising the duo?s murderous intent, but perplexed as to their motives, Gerfaut goes on the run, communicating with his family by telegram. Terrified, yet exhilarated by this release from his humdrum life, Gerfaut resolves to turn the tables and track down his pursuers. Jean-Patrick Manchette presents a clash between two opposing worlds: a conventional, middle-class existence cluttered by possessions and responsibilities, and a violent criminal underworld. In Georges Gerfaut we find an unlikely hero, an ordinary man thrust into extraordinary circumstances and forced to fight for his life. Three to Kill is another riveting slice of ?70s noir by a masterful stylist, ironist, and social critic.

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Page Count

134

Publisher

Serpent's Tail

Published Date

ISBN 10

1852424753

ISBN 13

9781852424756

The Mad and the Bad

By: Jean-Patrick Manchette

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The Mad and the Bad

By: Jean-Patrick Manchette

An NYRB Classics Original Winner of the French-American Foundation Translation Prize for Fiction 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 a serious ulcer. Michel hires Julie to look after Peter. And he hires Thompson to kill them. Julie and Peter escape. Thompson pursues. Bullets fly. Bodies accumulate. The craziness is just getting started. Like Jean-Patrick Manchette’s celebrated Fatale, The Mad and the Bad is a clear-eyed, cold-blooded, pitch-perfect work of creative destruction.

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Page Count

185

Publisher

New York Review of Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

1590177207

ISBN 13

9781590177204

No Room at the Morgue

By: Jean-Patrick Manchette

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No Room at the Morgue

By: Jean-Patrick Manchette

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 The Mad and the Bad. Here, inspired by his love of Dashiell Hammett, Manchette introduces Eugene Tarpon, private eye, a sometime cop who has set up shop after being kicked off the force for accidentally killing a political demonstrator. Months have passed, and Tarpon desultorily tries to keep in shape while drinking all the time. No one has shown up at the door of his office in the midst of the market district of Les Halles. Then the bell rings and a beautiful woman bursts in, her hands dripping blood. It’s Memphis Charles, her roommate’s throat has been cut, and Memphis can’t go to the police because they’ll only suspect her. Can Tarpon help? Well, somehow he can’t help trying. Soon bodies mount, and the craziness only grows.

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Page Count

209

Publisher

New York Review of Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

1681374196

ISBN 13

9781681374192

Fatal

By: Jean-Patrick Manchette

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Fatal

By: Jean-Patrick Manchette

Aimée ist Killerin und zieht von Stadt zu Stadt. Jetzt ist sie in Bléville, einer kleinen Provinzstadt schein-barer Wohlanständigkeit. Als ein örtlicher Skandal droht, den es zu vertuschen gilt, bietet Aimée den Honoratioren ihre Dienste an. «Es gibt immer irgendeinen oder irgendeine, die ein anderes doofes Arschloch umbringen möchte. Der Gedanke zu töten darf dem Kunden nicht mehr aus dem Kopf gehen. Zuletzt bietet man seine Dienste an, möglichst in einer Krisensituation. Ich sage ihnen nicht, dass ich ein Killer bin. Ich bin eine Frau ...»

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Page Count

101

Publisher

Distel Literatur Verlag

Published Date

ISBN 10

3923208944

ISBN 13

9783923208944

Streets of Paris, Streets of Murder

The Complete Graphic Noir of Manchette & Tardi Vol. 2

By: Jean-Patrick Manchette,Jacques Tardi

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Streets of Paris, Streets of Murder

The Complete Graphic Noir of Manchette & Tardi Vol. 2

By: Jean-Patrick Manchette,Jacques Tardi

The second of two volumes presenting all four hardboiled graphic crime novels by Jean-Patrick Manchette and Tardi. Like a Sniper Lining Up His Shot ― Martin Terrier, killer-for-hire, needs just one more big job so that he can turn in his guns for good and return home to marry his childhood sweetheart. But soon, he’s on the run ― not only from the authorities and his treacherous ex-clients, but also from a crime syndicate seeking revenge for an earlier hit on one of theirs. In Run Like Crazy, Run Like Hell, philanthropist Michael Hartog hires Julie, just out of a psychiatric asylum, as a nanny. But he plans to fake the kidnapping of his son, Peter ― and frame Julie for it. But Julie is no pushover, and soon, Julie and Peter are on the run, pursued by the police, and by Hartog’s enforcer, the hulking contract killer, Thompson.

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Page Count

210

Publisher

Fantagraphics Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

1683963202

ISBN 13

9781683963202

The N'Gustro Affair

By: Jean-Patrick Manchette

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The N'Gustro Affair

By: Jean-Patrick Manchette

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 war. The N’Gustro Affair is a thinly veiled retelling of the 1965 abduction and killing of Mehdi Ben Barka, a radical opponent of King Hassan II of Morocco. But this is merely the backdrop to Jean-Patrick Manchette’s first-person portrait (with shades of Jim Thompson’s The Killer Inside Me) of a man who lacks the insight to see himself for what he is: a wannabe nihilist too weak to be even a full-bore fascist.

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Page Count

201

Publisher

New York Review of Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

1681375125

ISBN 13

9781681375120

Book's by Jean-Patrick Manchette

Ivory Pearl

Ivory Pearl

The Prone Gunman

The Prone Gunman

The Gunman

The Gunman

Three to Kill

Three to Kill

The Mad and the Bad

The Mad and the Bad

No Room at the Morgue

No Room at the Morgue

Fatal

Fatal

Streets of Paris, Streets of Murder

Streets of Paris, Streets of Murder

The N'Gustro Affair

The N'Gustro Affair

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