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No Room at the Morgue Kindle Edition

by Jean-Patrick Manchette (Author), Alyson Waters (Translator) Format: Kindle Edition
4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 155 ratings
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Inspired by the works of Dashiell Hammett, No Room at the Morgue is Jean-Patrick Manchette's unparalleled take on the private eye novel — fierce, politically inflected, and finely rendered by the haunting, pitch-black prose for which the author is famed.

No Room at the Morgue came out after Jean-Patrick Manchette had transformed French crime fiction with such brilliantly plotted, politically charged, unrelentingly violent tales as Nada and The Mad and the Bad. Here, inspired by his love of Dashiell Hammett, Manchette introduces Eugene Tarpon, private eye, a sometime cop who has set up shop after being kicked off the force for accidentally killing a political demonstrator. Months have passed, and Tarpon desultorily tries to keep in shape while drinking all the time. No one has shown up at the door of his office in the midst of the market district of Les Halles. Then the bell rings and a beautiful woman bursts in, her hands dripping blood. It’s Memphis Charles, her roommate’s throat has been cut, and Memphis can’t go to the police because they’ll only suspect her. Can Tarpon help? 

Well, somehow he can’t help trying. Soon bodies mount, and the craziness only grows.
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  1. Print length
    209 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  4. Publisher
    NYRB Classics
  5. Publication date
    August 11, 2020
  6. File size
    1488 KB
  7. Page Flip
    Enabled
  8. Word Wise
    Enabled
  9. Enhanced typesetting
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“[A] clever crime novel . . . Manchette plays this story for ironic humor . . . Manchette remains essential reading.” —Publishers Weekly

“If Marx, Freud, and Jim Thompson collaborated on a noir, this might be the result.” —Kirkus Reviews

About the Author

Jean-Patrick Manchette (1942-1995) was a genre-redefining French crime novelist, screenwriter, critic, and translator. Throughout the 1960s Manchette supported himself with various jobs writing television scripts, screenplays, young adult books, and film novelizations. In 1971 he published his first novel, a collaboration with Jean-Pierre Bastid, and went on to produce ten subsequent works over the course of the next two decades and establishing a new genre of French novel, the néo-polar (distinguished from traditional detective novel, or polar, by its political engagement and social radicalism). NYRB Classics also publishes Manchette's Fatale, The Mad and the Bad, Nada, and Ivory Pearl.

Alyson Waters has translated several works from the French by Albert Cossery, Louis Aragon, René Belletto, and many others and has received a National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowship, a PEN Translation Fund grant, and residency grants from the Centre National du Livre and Villet Gillet in Lyon. She teaches literary translation in the French department of Yale University and is the managing editor of Yale French Studies. She lives in Brooklyn.

Howard Rodman is a screenwriter, novelist, and professor at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts. His most recent novel, The Great Eastern, was published in 2019. He lives in Los Angeles.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B081M4F8GH
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ NYRB Classics (August 11, 2020)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ August 11, 2020
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 1488 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 209 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 155 ratings

About the author

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Jean-Patrick Manchette

Jean-Patrick Manchette

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Jean-Patrick Manchette (December 19, 1942, Marseille – June 3, 1995, Paris) was a French crime novelist credited with reinventing and reinvigorating the genre. He wrote ten short novels in the 1970s and early 80s, and is widely recognized as the foremost French crime fiction author of that time. His stories are violent, existentialist explorations of the human condition and French society. Jazz saxophonist and screenwriter, Manchette was also a left-wing activist influenced as much by the writings of the Situationist International as by Dashiell Hammett.

Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5 stars
4.3 out of 5
155 global ratings
A Little Trip Down Memory Lane
5 Stars
A Little Trip Down Memory Lane
It isn't, quite, of course. Might'n be at all, for many. And yet there may well seem something reminiscent about it, at least to readers of a certain generation. Right away, you got the American noir idioms about American types coming your way, PIs and gangsters...there's an almost washed up, truly painfully self aware hero you'll care about, even if at one point his (not self chosen) targets are agents of the CIA...add in a wised up sensibility formed by a few of the weird and no doubt some of the vivifying undercurrents of the French 1960s, AND if that does not float your boat, there's a femme, or at least a teen, fatalle, and a seemingly never ending supply of pastis.
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Top reviews from the United States

Oliver Conant
5.0 out of 5 stars A Little Trip Down Memory Lane
Reviewed in the United States on February 12, 2021
Verified Purchase
It isn't, quite, of course. Might'n be at all, for many. And yet there may well seem something reminiscent about it, at least to readers of a certain generation. Right away, you got the American noir idioms about American types coming your way, PIs and gangsters...there's an almost washed up, truly painfully self aware hero you'll care about, even if at one point his (not self chosen) targets are agents of the CIA...add in a wised up sensibility formed by a few of the weird and no doubt some of the vivifying undercurrents of the French 1960s, AND if that does not float your boat, there's a femme, or at least a teen, fatalle, and a seemingly never ending supply of pastis.
Customer image
Oliver Conant
5.0 out of 5 stars A Little Trip Down Memory Lane
Reviewed in the United States on February 12, 2021
It isn't, quite, of course. Might'n be at all, for many. And yet there may well seem something reminiscent about it, at least to readers of a certain generation. Right away, you got the American noir idioms about American types coming your way, PIs and gangsters...there's an almost washed up, truly painfully self aware hero you'll care about, even if at one point his (not self chosen) targets are agents of the CIA...add in a wised up sensibility formed by a few of the weird and no doubt some of the vivifying undercurrents of the French 1960s, AND if that does not float your boat, there's a femme, or at least a teen, fatalle, and a seemingly never ending supply of pastis.
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3 people found this helpful
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Mary
4.0 out of 5 stars fast moving , great descriptive writing
Reviewed in the United States on November 4, 2020
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I felt like I was reading a movie , the writing was so descriptive . I enjoyed the characters and the setting. The story moved along at a fast clip
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eapdog
5.0 out of 5 stars Violent and funny - A French Pulp Fiction
Reviewed in the United States on April 7, 2021
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Yes, this is a violent book that does not spare the reader, but the protagonist is a bit of a shlemiel who seems to be trying to emulate Sam Spade, but manages to not do a very good job of it. But somehow, he figures it all out in the end. I read this as a satire of the Sam Spade detective novel and found it funny and entertaining despite the extreme violence. Pulp Fiction long before there was Pulp Fiction!
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Flimnap
3.0 out of 5 stars Hmmm.
Reviewed in the United States on April 11, 2021
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Well, I have to say that I enjoyed the book, though whether enough to recommend it I don't know. Our hero Tarpon is drugged, beaten, shot at, threatened, kidnapped—Manchette checks all the boxes. Tarpon is likeable enough and decent enough (it's a first-person account), but one infers almost nothing of his interior life. If someone merely enacts his nature, or is the one telling the story, is that enough to care about? The translation is very smooth and American, but there is little literature there—maybe that's just Manchette's style—quotidian and matter-of-fact. [Spoiler Alert:] By the way, he doesn't get the girl (or any girl, for that matter), which is a nice change.
4 people found this helpful
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Billiam
5.0 out of 5 stars Best French noir
Reviewed in the United States on August 30, 2020
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Manchette always delivers the goods with politically and socially tinged noir stories that are hard to put down.
This one has the flavor of a Raymond Chandler novel, which is a bit different for this author. But it still has bite, lots of action, and great dialog. If you are a noir fan, this is for you.
3 people found this helpful
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Lester
4.0 out of 5 stars Stupid question
Reviewed in the United States on November 29, 2020
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Are you kidding about this question? Wrapping fish? Toilet paper?
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chutney28
3.0 out of 5 stars So so
Reviewed in the United States on February 28, 2022
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At first I thought this was going to be a good one but the poor writing became tiresome. Not sure if it was the translation, poor editing or the guy just can't write well but there were too many odd word choices and dialoge that didn't ring true.
One person found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

Vikash Goyal
5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful read
Reviewed in India on January 24, 2022
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JEAN PATRICK MANCHETTE'S - NO ROOM AT THE MORGUE

RATING - 4.5/5

The moment I finished the book, the first thing that came to my mind was - what does it lack?
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This noir fiction tastes like black coffee with a punch. It is intense and intoxicating. It keeps the reader refreshed, yet hypnotised.
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No Room At The Morgue opens with the flawed protagonist trying to call it a day, and then, as is so often the case, finds himself, in a sudden turn of events, at the eye of a whirlwind of intrigues, and filial political antiques.
Thrilling to the bone, the writing is no less than a violent, yet brilliant cinematic screenplay.
The flow is perfect with a nail-biting setup.
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Set in 1970s Paris, the book takes the reader through the elite arrondissements good ol' Paree, and boldly glares at Capitalism and human conditioning.
The book talks in subtle undertones, about leftism and Hitler; about a state in the midst of revolution, and religious conflict; about how a half-hearted change in radical politics has resulted in terrorism, and about global conflict. The book talks of a lot.
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No Room at the Morgue is pleasing to the heart, eyes and head, and, is a complete entertainer. There is no room for flaws in this book.
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Book reader
5.0 out of 5 stars A hardboiled classic
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 14, 2021
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Fantastic title and fantastic noir. Manchette does it again in a story that doesn't skimp on cynicism or action.

Taking its cues from the American hardboiled genre, here Manchette delivers something slightly different to his usual fare, telling the story in first person from the protagonist, Tarpon' point of view. In doing so we are thrown into a crazy take of murder, political activism and just downright bad luck.
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Ken Nichols
4.0 out of 5 stars Another must read from this author
Reviewed in Australia on December 25, 2020
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Interesting and well drawn characters and that real sense of ‘noir’. Marvelous setting too.
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D. Morris
2.0 out of 5 stars Not a patch on Highsmith or Simenon
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 2, 2022
Verified Purchase
Manchette said of his work: "What do you do when you re-do [the classic American crime novels] at a distance—distant because the moment of that something is long gone? The American-style polar had its day. Writing in 1970 meant taking a new social reality into account, but it also meant acknowledging that the polar-form was finished because its time was finished: re-employing an obsolete form implies employing it referentially, honoring it by criticizing it, exaggerating it, distorting it from top to bottom."

I'm not so sure he succeeded there. Simenon's romans durs are something else entirely, taking psychological crime beyond even Highsmith. But this book was really just a pretty workmanlike updating of the Chandler/Hammett style. Entertaining while you're reading it, but immediately forgettable.
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