Fatale

A New York Review Books Original

Whether you call her a coldhearted grifter or the soul of modern capitalism,

there’s no question that Aimée is a killer and a more than professional one.

Now she’s set her eyes on a backwater burg—where, while posing as an innocent

(albeit drop-dead gorgeous) newcomer to town, she means to sniff out old

grudges and engineer new opportunities, deftly playing different people and

different interests against each other the better, as always, to make a

killing. But then something snaps: the master manipulator falls prey to a pure

and wayward passion.

Aimée has become the avenging angel of her own nihilism, exacting the

destruction of a whole society of destroyers. An unholy original, Jean-Patrick

Manchette transformed the modern detective novel into a weapon of gleeful

satire and anarchic fun. In _Fatale_ he mixes equal measures of farce, mayhem,

and madness to prepare a rare literary cocktail that packs a devastating

punch.