A review by david_wright
Three to Kill by Jean-Patrick Manchette

4.0

Here's a re-print of a 1976 French title with a spare, vicious elegance that stands in stark contrast to Stansbery's torrid sensationalism. Businessman Georges Gerfault stops to aid the victim of what seems to be a roadside accident but is in reality a failed hit job, and finds himself in the crosshairs of a pair of hired guns, Carlo and Bastien, who make their first attempt on his life while he vacations with his family at the sunny seaside, and chase him across the country and right out of his ordinary, complacent life. The swift, lean story with riveting episodes of unadorned brutality is related by a narrator not so much omniscient as insouciant, whose cool and clinical description of the desperate events unfolding before his impassive camera lens is occasionally leavened with slight Gallic shrugs and whiffs of sly humor as reminiscent of Voltaire as Camus. The result is rather like being a passenger in a precision sportscar hurtling down the highway at insane speeds, wondering if the driver's nonchalant demeanor and offhand remarks on the passing flora and fauna owe to his supreme expertise and confidence in German engineering, or to utter suicidal indifference. I swiftly gobbled up the only other Manchette currently available here — The Prone Gunman — and eagerly await the translation of his eight other crime novels. (Americans don't read or have access to nearly enough popular literature from other cultures — not that we're obliged to be cosmopolitan in our tastes, but the rest of the world has so many refreshingly different stories to tell us. The current interest in Euro-mysteries is an encouraging sign: let's resolve to travel the world this year, if only in our reading).