Rating: 7/10 · Translated from French; English edition 2002
- Plot: A professional killer tries to retire and return to his childhood sweetheart, but his employers won’t let him go.
- Clues: None; it is a crime thriller about violence and fate.
- Reveal: A savage and ironic ending that denies the hero his escape.
Martin Terrier is a hitman. After a final job, he decides to quit and return to the provincial town where he grew up, to claim the woman he loved as a teenager. But his employers have other plans, and the woman’s life has moved on.
Jean-Patrick Manchette’s last completed novel is a cold, fast, brutal book. The prose is stripped to its bones: actions, objects, brand names and violence, described without emotion. The effect is both gripping and disturbing.
Terrier is not a sympathetic hero. He is efficient, emotionally stunted and dangerous. The novel shows the absurdity of his dream of a normal life, and the bleak irony of his fate.
Manchette’s politics are present in the portrayal of corporate and intelligence structures that use violence as business. The book reads like a critique of the thriller as much as a thriller.
The weakness is its coldness. There is little depth of character, and the violence can be numbing.
The 7 reflects a sharp, influential noir. Readers who enjoy Richard Stark’s Parker novels will recognise the style. A loose film adaptation, The Gunman, appeared in 2015.002.
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