Review: Two Novels by Jean-Patrick Manchette

Fatale (tr. Donald Nicholson-Smith)

The Gunman (tr. James Brook)

To tie in with the release of the Sean Penn and Idris Elba movie The Gunman, Serpent’s Tail has re-released two classic French crime novels by Jean-Patrick Manchette. Hailed by David Peace as 'one of the greatest writers since Dashiell Hammett', Manchette’s writing infuses pulp fiction with political commentary and existentialist attitudes.

These themes come together most remarkably in his ninth novel, Fatale, published in 1977. Originally titled La Belle Dame Sans Merci after the poem by Keats, Fatale is fuelled by a sense of controlled rage and guided by a Marxist critique of society. Manchette declared that the purpose of the novel was to ‘show middle-class executives various things dressed as a spectacle, most notably dissatisfaction and violent responses to dissatisfaction'. Borrowing at times from Engels, Hegel and JK Huysmans, Fatale adds an intriguing ideological edge to a standard crime novel scenario.

In the best revenge fantasy style, the plot of Fatale follows a wronged woman on the warpath; in this case, though, the protagonist Melanie Horst is not out for vengeance on a specific individual but on the economic system that oppresses her. Horst’s backstory is left vague, but we are told that she had been alienated by the role which society expected her to fulfil: 'in particular, she could not get to sleep without a strong dose of barbiturates, nor wake up properly without a strong dose of stimulants...nor for that matter put up with her husband and the rest of her existence without quantities of appetite suppressants and tranquilisers'. She requires chemical assistance to fit in with the rhythms of capitalist production, a phenomenon described in Guy Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle.

Following her husband’s death, Horst has become itinerant, moving from town to town, infiltrating local society before launching a violent assault on the bourgeoisie. The first victim we see is the ‘potbellied and rubicund’ Roucart, who she guns down on a hunting expedition. Following this, she moves on to the seaside town of Bleville.

Along the way, Horst alters her identity, hair colour and style, in a carnivalesque, champagne-fuelled rebirth in a sleeper train compartment. To pass effectively, she has to embrace excess, smearing the scent of money over her body: 'she went on eating and drinking and progressively lost control of herself. She leaned over, still chewing, and opened the briefcase and pulled out fistfuls of banknotes and rubbed them against her sweat-streaked belly and against her breasts and her armpits and between her legs and behind her knees'.

Bleville is characterised by complacent respectability. The name itself is a pun, suggestive of cash. Plaques reading ‘KEEP YOUR TOWN CLEAN’ hang on every wall, and there seems little desire amongst the populace to question the status quo: describing the local newspapers, Manchette notes that 'one championed a left-capitalist ideology; the other championed a left-capitalist ideology. Both organs concerned themselves with the shipping news, and reported on parish fairs'.

Horst begins to penetrate the town’s stolid façade when she encounters the eccentric aristocratic figure of Baron Joules. She first observes him at a cocktail party celebrating the opening of a new market: he is urinating on the carpet of the women's powder room. He immediately follows this up by attacking a Bishop, before he is thrown out. His speech is straight from Engels, with a hint of Huysmans’ world-weary cynicism: 'given the present state of the world, don't you know, with the increase of constant capital as compared to variable capital'.

Joules is able to show her the fault lines in Bleville society, the secret affairs and the rumours that local industrialists Lorque and Lenverguez are responsible for pollution which poisons three of the town’s inhabitants in one day. The addition of Joules’ aristocratic disdain to her own proletarian rage empowers Horst to target the town’s bourgeoisie en masse, rather than selecting specific targets.

Horst’s seeming omnipotence reflects the author's Marxist view of history, representing the inevitable rise of the proletariat. Thanks to Joules, she is able to use the threat of shame to put the bourgeoisie onto the back foot, before following up with violence. There is no room for compromise, or working within the existing system. During the final showdown, Horst confronts a businessman who attempts to justify his actions within a liberal capitalist framework: 'I've been giving employment to workers and making land productive… just tell me one outrageous thing, one truly criminal thing in what I have done'. Her response is final: 'do you really imagine I'm interested in your crimes and misdemeanours?'

By contrast, The Gunman (1981) is a relatively straightforward thriller. The novel follows an assassin, Martin Terrier, who is looking to get out of the business, but finds himself obliged to do ‘one last job’ by his paymasters. The Gunman is far more concerned with the traditional hardware of crime fiction than Fatale, with references to Redford silencers, Heckler and Koch automatic pistols, and brands of Scotch.

The details we are given about Terrier are scant: he is a fan of Maria Callas, and began his career as a mercenary in Africa. His prime motivation is to reunite with his childhood sweetheart Anne, who had promised to wait ten years for him, but married, and has descended into melancholy drunkenness.

The novel begins in England, and there is plenty of nostalgic detail as Manchette describes cinema cashiers knitting in their glass booths, and Watney’s Strong Ale being sold in pubs. The prose is terse, but there is one nagging trait, as Manchette frequently switches between referring to the protagonist as 'Terriere' and 'the man', giving some sentences an unfortunate Dan Brown quality.

The Gunman is an extremely brutal novel: early on, during a botched job, a woman is shot. The narrator reports that she ‘flew back, her intestines emptying noisily'. One character is almost sliced in half by machine gun bullets, 'pieces of brains in his ear and between his teeth'; another is blown up by a landmine.

Towards the novel’s end, Manchette introduces a political element, with the involvement of French and US secret service officers and leaders of OPEC states. There is some implicit criticism of the exigencies of foreign policy, but the deeper political message of the novel is more subtle, as Manchette builds up the superheroic figure of the lone gunman before the character is broken down by the machinations of governments and business interests.

I was blown away by the ambition and originality of Fatale; The Gunman is more straightforward. A perfectly serviceable thriller, it is slightly disappointing by contrast with the earlier novel. At around 100 pages each, these are both quick reads, with plenty of cathartic appeal: Fatale is essential, while The Gunman is probably for crime fans only.