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Fatale

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Brought to you by Penguin.

Murder isn’t always ugly.

Aimée is drop-dead gorgeous, razor-sharp, and lethally efficient. A killer with a cool head and a taste for chaos, she arrives in the backwater town of Bléville – a festering stew of grudges, corruption, and small-town rot – ready to make a killing.

She’s played this game before: stir up trouble, pit the locals against one another, then disappear with blood on her hands and money in her pocket. But this time, something breaks. Aimée lets someone in – and the game turns personal.

Jean-Patrick Manchette transformed the crime novel into a weapon of satire and stylish mayhem. Fatale is his bloodiest, funniest, and most brilliantly unhinged work: a riot of revenge, farce, and gleeful destruction.

PRAISE FOR JEAN-PARICK MANCHETTE

‘Manchette was Le Homme... We must revere him now and rediscover him this very instant. ’ James Ellroy

‘Manchette is Camus on overdrive... He deserves much the same attention’ James Sallis

‘Manchette is legend among all of the crime writers I know, and with good reason: his novels never fail to stun and thrill from page one’ Duane Swierczynski

© Jean-Patrick Manchette 2026 (P) Penguin Audio 2026

Critics Review

France's king of noir fiction…he writes with a bleak, tragic beauty
The Times
Shocking, funny, sad, smart and cool… A macabre delight from start to finish
Big Issue
A fist between the eyes, leaving the reader reeling… So devastating it takes your breath away
Complete Review
Manchette's books are all action, unfolding with a laconic efficiency that would make his killers proud
The Economist
I’d rather read Manchette than many contemporary noir writers.
New York Times

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