mikerickson reviewed Fatale by Jean-Patrick Manchette (New York Review Books classics)
Review of 'Fatale' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
You remember that scene from The Addams Family Values where Joan Cusack's character monologues, "So I killed, and maimed and ruined lives, but don't I deserve love? ...and jewelry?" And then Morticia nods and a single tear falls down her cheek? That was me reading this book.
I feel like protagonists (or any character really) can be placed upon two axes where one is Good-Bad and the other is Likeable-Unlikeable. For me, Aimée was clearly an awful person who did terrible things, but I was still rooting for her because I liked her. Sometimes you just want to see someone cause problems for its own sake. And she kills a guy on page 2, so you know what you're getting into right out of the gate.
Aimée arrives in a French town on the English Channel in the 1960's and immediately starts integrating herself into the local high society, learning …
You remember that scene from The Addams Family Values where Joan Cusack's character monologues, "So I killed, and maimed and ruined lives, but don't I deserve love? ...and jewelry?" And then Morticia nods and a single tear falls down her cheek? That was me reading this book.
I feel like protagonists (or any character really) can be placed upon two axes where one is Good-Bad and the other is Likeable-Unlikeable. For me, Aimée was clearly an awful person who did terrible things, but I was still rooting for her because I liked her. Sometimes you just want to see someone cause problems for its own sake. And she kills a guy on page 2, so you know what you're getting into right out of the gate.
Aimée arrives in a French town on the English Channel in the 1960's and immediately starts integrating herself into the local high society, learning about long-standing grudges and who has dirt on who. She bides her time until an opportunity presents itself and she can start playing people off of each other to her own benefit. Honestly that was compelling enough for me, but storytelling demands a complication. This is where things went sideways for me.
What should have been the end of a successful job doesn't go as Aimée plans, which is fine in its own way, but she is ultimately at fault for it, and not in a tragic hero, "she had this inherent fatal flaw from the start" kind of way; it was all rather abrupt, like she became a different character though some catalyst that I must have missed. And then the last quarter or so of the book has a stark tone shift from sleuthing and politicking to Tarantino-levels of violence. It didn't really make sense to me.
The ending was almost Cain-esque, reminding me of The Postman Always Rings Twice, and it was interesting to see a non-American take on the noir genre, but I don't know that this necessarily would be something I'd recommend to someone just starting to dip their toe into crime fiction.
