The Prone Gunman

hello.....could somebody out there please get more english editions of jean-patrick manchette's work back in print. i have read 3 to kill (which was fantastic) and now the prone gunman (equally fantastic), and i need more of this author. the prone gunman is an assassin novel unlike any other you will read. fresh, inventive, very unpredictable, with a cast of characters that nicely dodge being cliches. this is a great noir book. and i highly recommend it as an addition to your home.

I had previously read Manchette's other translated book, Three to Kill, and gave it a four star review. As The Prone Gunman is even better still, it warrants the full five stars. This is what noir is all about - a lean plot and lots of action. Indeed, I started reading the book one night, lost track of the body count, was amazed at the thrills and was shocked to discover I was only on page 48.The plot revolves around a hired killer who is looking to retire and hook back up with the girl he had left behind some years before. Of course, nothing goes as planned. The family of a prior hit is after him, his bosses do not want him to retire and our "hero" himself is simply emotionally unprepared for a normal existence. Added to this is that the characters with whom he interacts are all morally vacuous. A reader will not find any sentimentality in this book. He will, however, find a lot of excitement.

French crime writer Manchette's final novel was published in 1981 and now finally appears in English over twenty years later. Unmistakably influenced by Jean-Pierre Melville's brilliant 1967 film "Le Samourai", the story is about Martin, a professional hit man who wants to quit the business and return home to claim his childhood love. However, the mysterious government agency who hires him wants him to do just one last job... Of course this is an old story, and naturally Martin finds it's not so easy to just walk away. Having come from a miserable small town upbringing, he's proven himself in the big bad world and just wants to retire to a quiet beach somewhere with his old girlfriend. But this is the noir world of shattered illusions-as one character puts it, "You're dreaming, there are no more desert islands!" It doesn't take too much reading between the lines to uncover Manchette's larger political metaphor in the story of a kid who hires himself out to do someone else's killing for ten years only to find it's tainted him forever. The book is brutally dark, but if you like the whole nihilist crime thing, it's worth the two hours it takes to read. The lean story unfolds in rapid, flat prose without an ounce of sentimentality and it's not hard to see why Manchette quit writing after this. If your world view is that bleak, there's not a whole lot else to say, is there?

As one reviewer summed it up, this is Dashiel Hammett meets Guy Debord, and it's true; flat, spare prose with a sense of existential nihilism from which there is no escape. Fast, rough, violent reading, told in a matter-of-fact procedural manner. The ending is telegraphed rather obviously, but this is first rate work, and if you're into violent noirs, you should read it. What a film it would make, in the right hands!