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Classic Garnier; the absurdity of life, deeply flawed but strangely likeable characters. Death with a Gallic shrug.

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After losing his wife and suffering a stroke, Édouard has retired to the mountains with his nurse. One day a man arrives claiming to be his long-lost son. This seems to bring about a softening of Édouard´s temper, but it isn´t long before the local vultures begin to circle . . .

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´Brief, brisk, ruthlessly entertaining novels ... Garnier makes bleakness pleasurable´ John Powers, National Public Radio

´Deliciously dark ... painfully funny´ New York Times

Only now working their way into English translation, Garnier´s crime novels add significantly to the latest renaissance for this type of dark narrative.´ Publishers Weekly

´Readers will relish the late Pascal Garnier´s graveyard humorous dark French noir´ Midwest Book Review

´Masterly´ John Banville

´Garnier plunges you into a bizarre, overheated world, seething death, writing, fictions and philosophy. He´s a trippy, sleazy, sly and classy read.´ A L Kennedy

´Like Georges Simenon´s books, Pascal Garnier´s subversive, almost surreal tales come in slim little volumes, seldom more than 150 pages or so. But in that space he manages to say as much, and more memorably too, than many authors of books that are too heavy to hold.´ Literary Review

´Tense, strange, disconcerting and slyly funny´ Sunday Times

´The final descent into violence is worthy of J G Ballard. 4 stars´ The Independent

´A master of the surreal noir thriller - Luis Bu¤uel meets Georges Simenon.´ TLS

´Combines a sense of the surreal with a ruthless wit.´ The Observer

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Pascal Garnier: Pascal Garnier is a leading figure in contemporary French literature, in the tradition of Georges
Simenon. He lived in a small village in the Ardèche devoting himself to writing and painting. Garnier died in March 2010.

Jane Aitken is a publisher and translator. She lives in London.

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