Total Chaos

September 5, 2005
A love quadrangle that has lain dormant for 20 years—three men and one woman, friends and successive partners in childhood and young adulthood—resurfaces with a vengeance in this literary policier
. Italian émigré Fabio Montale is the beat cop in Marseille's La Paternelle, an Arab ghetto that sits at the center of the city's seething melting pot of immigration, xenophobia and corruption. He's the last of the three men left standing after Manu, a Spanish émigré, is killed (probably by the mob) and Ugo (a nabo
, or Neapolitan) is killed by police while staking out the boss he thinks ordered the hit. Manu was the partner of Lole, also from Spain and Ugo's ex-lover. If the deaths aren't enough to spur Fabio to action, the disappearance of his former lover Leila, an Arab who had made it out of La Paternelle, puts him on the case—and back in Lole's life. Izzo, who died in 2000 at age 55, puts a sophisticated spin on mob-murder–mystery clichés and airs French race politics frankly—the latter is what made this (and two related novels) a hit there. This novel won't electrify U.S. readers in the same way, but it's a hard-boiled and entertaining look at the underside of la politesse
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October 1, 2005
In this first installment of a trilogy (Europa Editions will publish "Posse" and "Solea", the second and third installments, in 2007), the French port of Marseilles gets the unadulterated noir treatment. Three boyhood friends -Fabio, Ugo, and Manu -are in love with the same girl. As adults, Ugo and Manu stray into a life of crime, while Fabio becomes a police officer. The girl is still waiting for Ugo when he gets out of prison, but soon both he and Manu are killed, leaving only Fabio to try to make sense of the puzzle. For the Marseilles-born author who died in 2000, it's all in the atmosphere. Noir and Marseilles get reduced to their ugly essentials, with Izzo conveying the "mixture of piss, dampness and mildew" that is the essence of both. Though the plot of this "Mediterranean noir" tale is as insubstantial as the cause for a good street fight, the vivid portrayal of a city as a melting pot on the verge of a meltdown is comparable to such recent works as Donna Leon's "Blood from a Stone" and Ian Rankin's "Fleshmarket Alley". Recommended for all larger public libraries, especially those where cosmopolitan works are in demand. -Bob Lunn, Kansas City P.L., MO

Copyright 2005 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 15, 2005
Add another European city, torn between old and new worlds, to the hard-boiled map. Izzo's Marseilles Trilogy, of which this uncompromising mix of noir thriller and unconventional procedural is the first volume, was a smash in France and, with enough buzz, may be here, too. The story concerns three friends--Ugo, Manu, and Fabio--who grew up in Marseilles' roughest neighborhood, dabbling in street crime and vying for the same girls. But Fabio opted out, alienating his friends by becoming a cop. Now, 20 years later, Manu and Ugo are dead, and it is left to Fabio to avenge them. Mood is all here, and Izzo nails it, exploiting Marseilles' port-city seediness and the racial tensions that have transformed what was once a haven for immigrants into a powder keg ready to explode. No aging, world-weary cop in the manner of Henning Mankell's Kurt Wallander, Fabio is a microcosm of the new Europe: young, angry, and unpredictable, an updated Jean-Paul Belmondo working both sides of the law. Watch this series closely.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2005, American Library Association.)