The Mad and the Bad

Starred review from June 2, 2014
First published in 1972, this taut crime thriller from French neo-noir master Manchette (Fatale) is suffused with the dissipated left-wing malaise of post-’68 France. Wealthy Parisian architect Michel Hartog springs Julie Ballanger from a New Age mental hospital and hires her to look after his nephew, Peter, a boy of six or seven whose parents died in a plane crash. Meanwhile, Thompson, a vicious hit man with a queasy stomach, eats choucroute after a particularly grisly job. A mysterious client recruits Thompson to kidnap Julie and Peter and kill them, making their deaths look like the work of the mentally unstable nanny. But Julie and Peter escape, and are pursued across France by Thompson and his thugs. Will Julie discover who hired Thompson in time to turn the tables, or will nanny flambeau be on the dessert menu? Manchette (1942–1995) unobtrusively weaves his social criticism into the well-paced plot.

July 15, 2014
A young beauty sprung from an insaneasylum, a hired killer with a bad case of workplace anxiety, a calculatingphilanthropist and his orphaned nephew create nonstop havoc in this 1972 Frenchnovel, translated into English for the first time.The opening scene might lead you toexpect the grisliest kind of pulp fiction: The killer, Thompson,overcoming severe stomach cramps, shoves a hacksaw blade into the heart of asuspected pederast. And there certainly is no shortage of extreme violence.Right up until the end, people are getting shot, stabbed and bonked in the headwith heavy objects, a department store is left in flames, and the Frenchcountryside is at risk from speeding vehicles. But this is at heart amerciless comedy in which every violent act and utterance carries the potentialof hilarity. Julie, the beauty hired to care for the increasingly unstableyoung orphan, is a piece of work the likes of which we've never seen-lethal andmaternal. Manchette, who died in 1995, was a master of control. The fiercedeadpan tone of the novel never wavers even as its gang of criminalsdemonstrates its inability to shoot straight. As in a Jacques Tati film, sheerlunacy propels the story, one outrageous mishap triggering another. Set in the'70s, the book is on one level a sendup of classic noir, but it's no spoof,existing in its own perverse universe.A minor masterpiece from a Frenchnovelist whose other recently reissued works include Fatale and TheProne Gunman.

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July 1, 2014
The French love affair with American crime has produced films and novels that, in turn, influenced American culture in a fascinating, ongoing relationship. In the 1970s, Manchette created his own subgenre, the n'o-polar: hard-boiled crime fiction with political undertones and a cool, stylish existentialism. It's hard to believe The Mad and the Bad (1972) hasn't been translated to English before, and not only because it was a Grand Prix winner. A beautiful woman is freed from an insane asylum by a rich philanthropist who wants her to care for his nephew. But when the nanny and her charge are kidnapped, it's not the ransom plot it appearsin fact, as they escape and flee the gunmen hired to kill them, the truth of the situation is clearly a metaphor for the left-leaning author's deep cynicism about French society. Scenes play out like an art filmManchette was also a screenwriterright up until the prolonged, blood-spattered finale. Interest should be sparked by the forthcoming film adaptation of Manchette's 1981 The Prone Gunman (called The Gunman and starring Sean Penn).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)