Command Performance

In Echenoz’s idiosyncratic latest (after Special Envoy), ne’er-do-well Gerald Fulmard runs a detective agency out of his Paris home after losing his job as an airline steward. When members of the Independent Popular Federation, a fringe political party, hire him to investigate Louise Tourneur, the daughter-in-law of the party’s founder and honorary president, Franck Terrail, the case ensnares Gerald in nasty political squabbling and thorny family dynamics. The Louise job coincides with the politically motivated kidnapping of Nicole Tourneuer, Franck’s wife and the party’s national secretary. Gerald’s investigative ineptitude causes him to incriminate himself in the kidnapping, and he becomes a blackmail target after he stumbles on a murder victim while trying to clear his name. When Nicole reemerges unharmed, Gerald’s relief is short-lived, because party members immediately try to rope him into a far-fetched assassination plot against Franck himself. Fans of Jean-Patrick Manchette’s deadpan irony will appreciate Echenoz’s vibrant, playful homage to the hard-boiled genre, which plays a bit like The Big Lebowski on the Seine. This is a good bet for crime fiction fans seeking something off the beaten path. (Jan.)