Jean-Patrick Manchette

Who was Jean-Patrick Manchette?

Jean-Patrick Manchette was a French crime novelist credited with reinventing and reinvigorating the genre. He wrote ten short novels in the seventies and early eighties, and is widely recognized as the foremost French crime fiction author of the 1970s - 1980s . His stories are violent, existentialist explorations of the human condition and French society. Manchette was politically to the left and his writing reflects this through his analysis of social positions and culture. His books are reminiscent of the nouvelle vague crime films of Jean-Pierre Melville, employing a similarly cool, existential style on a typically American genre.

Four of his novels have been translated into English. Two were published by San Francisco publisher City Lights Books. Two other novels, Fatale and The Mad and the Bad [from the French "O dingos, O chateaux!"], were released by New York Review Books Classics in 2011 and 2014, respectively. In 2009, Fantagraphics Books released an English-language version of French cartoonist Jacques Tardi's adaptation of Le petit bleu, under the new English title West Coast Blues.