No Room at the Morgue

June 1, 2020
Business is slow for Paris PI Eugène Tarpon, the narrator of this clever crime novel from Manchette (1942–1995) first published in 1973. “I sleep a lot. Or rather, I’m half awake a lot,” he admits. Tarpon also drinks a lot. Then late one night, Memphis Charles, a small-time actor, rings the bell of his tiny, five-flight walkup apartment. She has found her roommate, Griselda Zapata, with a slit throat, but doesn’t want to go to the police because she’s afraid she’ll be arrested for the murder. When Tarpon refuses to assist, Memphis knocks him out with his phone. The hard up Tarpon later accepts a large check from Griselda’s brother to find the killer. The private eye eventually reconnects with Memphis, and lies to the police about her whereabouts, as he follows leads deep into the porn industry. Manchette plays this story for ironic humor, which might distress the many fans who know him for the symphonic sessions of assassination and gunplay in such masterpieces as The Prone Gunman and The Mad and the Bad. But even a lesser Manchette remains essential reading.

June 1, 2020
An ex-cop-turned-private eye gets involved in a murder and finds the woman who brought him into the case may be the killer. Eug�ne Tarpon, the hero--if such a thing is possible in the nihilist atmosphere of this book--quit the police force after accidentally killing a protester. His attempt to make a go of it as a private eye has brought him to the brink of ruin, and he's about to retreat from Paris to his rural hometown when a mysterious woman (in noir, is there any other kind?) asks him to investigate the murder of her roommate. When he turns up at the scene, the cops are already there, the woman has disappeared, and the detective finds himself the object of police interest. Manchette, who wrote this book in the 1970s, is widely credited with revitalizing French noir. The novel is driven more by plot than attitude, and its nihilism doesn't preclude the possibility that people will act decently. At times, as when one person after another--potential clients and would-be tormentors--keeps showing up on the hero's doormat when all he wants is to nap and enjoy a tin of cassoulet, the book takes on the escalating complications of a screwball farce. An extended kidnap sequence, in which the hero finds himself stuck between thugs and the bumblings of a group of radical leftists, is brutal and funny at the same time. The plot sags a bit and the windup depends too much on pat psychologizing, but neither does too much damage to the fun. If Marx, Freud, and Jim Thompson collaborated on a noir, this might be the result.

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