Name: Three To Kill
ISBN: 9780872866669

Jean-Patrick Manchette

First in English for Manchette, renovator of French noir; trenchant social critique laced with black humor.

Three To Kill

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......

City Lights Noir

Fraser Simons

This was at once charming and disarming. Steeped in old Parisian culture and style and music, our unusual omniscient narrator tells the story of Georges Gerfaut, a businessman who ends up being hunted by two hitman for unknown reasons following a brief slice-of-life section preceded by tracking shots from the future of a man and his dog brutally killed (heads up for those who don’t like animal violence), and our man Gerfaut rocketing along a highway in a Mercedes. 

Very much a sort of mash-up of Cohen brothers and Tarantino but vividly, sensuously French. Street names and travel itineraries and food and clothes all build around a French ecosystem; strangeness and things entirely apart from the everyday, very English. It somehow works. Half the fun is being placed in that time period with great description of absolutely everything. It even tends to shirk colour, making it feel like a noir black and white film most of the time, for me. It initially put me off, vacillating between the comical and the hard-boiled—but the narrator pulls it off with the unusual perspective and closing chapter. 

It also helps it’s quite short and punchy; staccato sentences and matter-of-fact prose style feel reminiscent of Hemingway, albeit decidedly, purposefully off-of-center with dialogue, the only real consistent weakness of the book. I do think it’s there for a point though. It knows it’s built a character and a gonzo hybrid thing encapsulating a moment in time. I imagine it’s so odd it’ll put some people off. A 4.5 rounded up, because I really do think it’s unique and interesting in lasting ways.

Three To Kill

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