No Room at the Morgue

Radical, ruthless - and razor-sharp. Welcome to the brutal, revolutionary crime thrillers of Jean-Patrick Manchette, reissued by Vintage Classics in a major new celebratory series.

Ex-cop, ex-idealist, and man in free fall, Eug ne Tarpon has been kicked off the force for killing a protester. Now he's holed up in a dingy Les Halles office, drinking too much and waiting for something to happen.

Then it does. Memphis Charles, wild-eyed and bloodstained, bursts in claiming her roommate's been brutally murdered - but she can't go to the police. She wants Tarpon. And for reasons even he can't explain, he takes the case. As the bodies mount, Tarpon is dragged into a Parisian underworld of politics, sleaze, and paranoia - with nothing to guide him but instinct, stubbornness, and a battered sense of justice.

With No Room at the Morgue, Manchette rewrote the American hardboiled detective novel into a bleak, boozy, and brilliantly French bruising meditation on guilt, truth, and the art of going down swinging.

Jean-Patrick Manchette (1942-1995) was a crime novelist, screenwriter, critic, and translator. In 1971 he published his first novel and went on to establish a new genre of French novel, the neo-polar. Vintage Classics publishes his Fatale, Nada, No Room at the Morgue and Skeletons in the Closet.