Chourmo

July 24, 2006
Fans of gritty noir who haven't read Total Chaos
, the first title in Izzo's Marseilles trilogy, will still be gripped by this sequel. Ex-cop Fabio Montale, whose compassion puts him at odds with his colleagues and superiors, gets an appeal from his attractive cousin to trace her missing son. Tragically, Montale soon finds the boy was killed by gunmen targeting someone else. The apparently related death of a friend, a social worker dedicated to working in Marseilles's poorest neighborhoods, further spurs Montale to risk his life to track down those responsible. Like the best American practitioners in the genre, Izzo refrains from any sugarcoating of the city he depicts or the broken and imperfect men and women who people it.

August 1, 2006
The second in the late Izzo's Marseilles Trilogy, following " Total Chaos" (2005), once again finds Fabio Montale--now at loose ends, after quitting the corruption-riddled Marseilles police force--entangled in somebody else's troubles. This time it's his cousin, the beautiful Gelou, whose son has disappeared after running away to be with his Arab girlfriend. Fabio agrees to look for the boy, but he finds instead a hydra-headed tragedy--murder and deceit fueled by the racism that threatens to turn the once vibrant seaport town into a cauldron of violence. This hard-hitting series captures all the world-weariness of the contemporary European crime novel, but Izzo mixes it with a hero who is as virile as he is burned out. And lyrical, too, as when he muses on the infinite shades of blue visible to those who take the trouble to really look at the sea and the sky, "to caress the landscape with your eyes." But Fabio quickly turns away from lyricism, stubbing out another cigarette and preparing for the worst that humankind has to offer. Bogart lives.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2006, American Library Association.)