Safe Return Doubtful

translated from the French by Alyson Waters

This is the seventh NYRB translation of a Manchette novel. To some degree, in order of translation at least, he lives off the strength of his phenomenal earlier work, Fatale, The Mad and the Bad, and Three to Kill, though the latter NYRB has yet to issue.
First published in 1976, it is another outing for the former cop turned private investigator, Eugène Tarpon.

It begins with a referral, a rare case of a police officer sending a case across to Tarpon, “I thought of you because it’s an odd case” – in other words, the police have run out of ideas and see solving the case as impossible. Marthe Pigot’s blind daughter, Philippine, has disappeared without a trace.
Pretty soon Tarpon has a visitor who encourages him to drop the case, as, he is told, the daughter left home of her own accord. But as Tarpon heads to visit Madame Pigot the novel becomes more typical Manchette, with an acute violent turn. Tarpon suddenly becomes a wanted man.

It was Tarpon’s second, and last outing. Manchette dropped him after this, and it’s not difficult to see why. PI stories aren’t Manchette’s thing. Though these two are soild enough, they restrict his talents too much. There’s less of the classic Gallic noir, the amalgam of wit and menace so hard to recreate, and more of the comparatively dull police procedural.

My GoodReads score 3 / 5