From Publishers Weekly
A love quadrangle that has lain dormant for 20 years—three men and one woman, friends and successive partners in childhood and young adulthood—resurfaces with a vengeance in this literary
policier. Italian émigré Fabio Montale is the beat cop in Marseille's La Paternelle, an Arab ghetto that sits at the center of the city's seething melting pot of immigration, xenophobia and corruption. He's the last of the three men left standing after Manu, a Spanish émigré, is killed (probably by the mob) and Ugo (a
nabo, or Neapolitan) is killed by police while staking out the boss he thinks ordered the hit. Manu was the partner of Lole, also from Spain and Ugo's ex-lover. If the deaths aren't enough to spur Fabio to action, the disappearance of his former lover Leila, an Arab who had made it out of La Paternelle, puts him on the case—and back in Lole's life. Izzo, who died in 2000 at age 55, puts a sophisticated spin on mob-murder–mystery clichés and airs French race politics frankly—the latter is what made this (and two related novels) a hit there. This novel won't electrify U.S. readers in the same way, but it's a hard-boiled and entertaining look at the underside of
la politesse.
(Nov.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Add another European city, torn between old and new worlds, to the hard-boiled map. Izzo's Marseilles Trilogy, of which this uncompromising mix of noir thriller and unconventional procedural is the first volume, was a smash in France and, with enough buzz, may be here, too. The story concerns three friends--Ugo, Manu, and Fabio--who grew up in Marseilles' roughest neighborhood, dabbling in street crime and vying for the same girls. But Fabio opted out, alienating his friends by becoming a cop. Now, 20 years later, Manu and Ugo are dead, and it is left to Fabio to avenge them. Mood is all here, and Izzo nails it, exploiting Marseilles' port-city seediness and the racial tensions that have transformed what was once a haven for immigrants into a powder keg ready to explode. No aging, world-weary cop in the manner of Henning Mankell's Kurt Wallander, Fabio is a microcosm of the new Europe: young, angry, and unpredictable, an updated Jean-Paul Belmondo working both sides of the law. Watch this series closely.
Bill OttCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Book Description
"Jean-Claude Izzo's . . . growing literary renown and huge sales are leading to a recognizable new trend in continental fiction: the rise of the sophisticated Mediterranean thriller. . . . Caught between pride and crime, racism and fraternity, tragedy and light, messy urbanization and generous beauty, the city for [detective Fabio Montale] is a Utopia, an ultimate port of call for exiles. There, he is torn between fatalism and revolt, despair and sensualism."-The Economist
This first installment in the legendary Marseilles Trilogy sees Fabio Montale turning his back on a police force marred by corruption and racism and taking the fight against the mafia into his own hands.
Jean-Claude Izzo achieved astoundingly rapid success with his Marseilles Trilogy. He died in Marseilles in 2000 at the age of 55.
About the Author
Jean-Claude Izzo achieved immediate success with his Marseilles Trilogy (Total Chaos, Chourmo, Solea). In addition to this trilogy, his two novels The Lost Sailors, The Sun of the Dying, and one collection of short stories, Living Tires, enjoyed great critical and popular acclaim. Izzo died in 2000 at the age of fifty-five.
