Fatale (original 1977; edition 2011)

France, 1970s, noir, philosophy, class politics, a female killer, and a great ending. ( )

In the first scene, a hunter is shot in cold blood by a young woman who he seems to know. She immediately leaves and travels to the small town of Bleville where she takes up the identity of a rich widow, Aimee Joubert. Aimee coolly kills for money by insinuating herself into the wealthy class in every new town, discovering the secrets and grudges of everyone and offering her services at an appropriate time.

Bleville is a too-convenient place – in a couple weeks, Aimee witnesses adultery, poisonings, blackmail and a psychiatric release on the loose. It’s all excessively coincidental and the ending is even more unbelievable. It’s almost a satire of final bloodbaths. The prose is succinct and functional. This works well at first in describing Aimee’s cold efficiency and highlights a few startling moments – a death at a party, Aimee’s outburst at her mother. However, when Aimee becomes disgusted by the townspeople and feels guilt over a murder, I wasn’t feeling it. I enjoyed reading about Aimee worming her way into the town and the impecunious, crazy voyeur Baron Jules, but this is more of a couple hours’ forgettable entertainment. ( )

J.P. Manchette's Fatale is an elegant little book, beautifully adapting noir forms and conventions to high literary effect. It's wonderfully entertaining, and well worth the NYRB Classics treatment -- if only because it previously may have escaped notice. And this translation (unlike many such efforts) is superb, almost to the point of making a reader in English forget the novella's French origin.

Starting from a general premise that all noir protagonists are fundamentally flawed, living and "working" (such as it may be) in shadows or on the wrong side of the law, Manchette here drops his reader into the midst of his femme fatale's life and "work," with little context or fanfare. It doesn't take long, however, to begin piecing together some of who she is and what she's up to -- at least to the extent we'll ever know. With the note, " ... the young woman had chosen to call herself Aimée Joubert, and that is what I shall call her from now on," we're fairly warned both that this narrator is not omniscient, and that our protagonist is unreliable. In short order, however, we also see the tides turn, as Aimée is embroiled in something far bigger than her carefully calculated and orchestrated schemes can contain.

I suspect Fatale is an excellent introduction to Manchette's work, and I'm anxious to see more of it. ( )

Less detective and more dark drama, Fatale is the story of a self-motivated, self-taught assassin. It starts out with murder and ends in a blood bath. Aimee arrives in a small-ish town and charts her own path to rid the world of "real assholes" but gets caught up at the last minute with a slight moment of remorse. Too late though for her and everything ends.

Fatale was a strange and unbelievable crime novella about a attractive young widow and cold-blooded killer who moves to a small French seaside town, where she uses her allure and social skills to befriend the most influential people. After a series of mysterious deaths occurs, Aimée befriends a mentally troubled man living on the edge of town who seeks revenge against its most prominent citizens, and uses him to blackmail them, in order to keep sensitive information from leaking out. The plan goes somewhat awry, but Aimée triumphs due to her cunning and superior strength and ability.

Other than the clever portrayals of Aimée and the troubled Baron Jules, there was little in this novella to keep my interest, and the story was rather slight and wooden. Fatale may be of some interest to those who like crime novels, but everyone else should steer clear of this book. ( )