"Marseilles isn't a city for tourists," says Fabio Montale, the police detective who narrates Jean-Claude Izzo's sensationally readable mystery "Total Chaos," the start of an
internationally famous trilogy and the first of his books to be published in the U.S. "There's nothing to see. Its beauty can't be photographed. It can only be shared. It's a place where you have to take sides, be passionately for or against. Only then can you see what there is to see. And you realize, too late, that you're in the middle of a tragedy. An ancient tragedy in which the hero is death. In Marseilles, even to lose you have to know how to fight."
When the book starts, death has already over-taken one of three men in their 40s who were boyhood friends in the streets of one of the French port city's roughest areas and then 20 years ago went their separate ways because of the love each one felt for a younger girl. Manu, whose family had emigrated from Spain, stayed in Marseilles and made his living as a criminal until he was shot down in the street, probably in a professional killing.
Ugo, originally from Naples, returns from his own criminal life in Paris to avenge his friend's death and is killed by the police after committing a violent public assassination. Now Montale is left to sort out the end of his own boyhood hopes and dreams--a job that involves digging into the intricate worlds of high crime and political corruption.
Izzo's book is full of fascinating characters, tersely brought to life in a prose style that is (thanks to
Howard Curtis' shrewd translation) traditionally dark and completely original. But above and around them is the major character: the city of Marseilles, a looming example of how environment shapes peoples' lives.
"Reading Izzo's novels, you're bound to cry sooner or later," said Le Monde when "Total Chaos" was published. You may also cry when you read that Izzo died at age 55 in 2000--too early, but at least long enough to know how much readers valued his work. All thanks to the new Europa Editions for this beautiful paperback original--and for its plans to publish the last two volumes of Izzo's Marseilles trilogy in the months ahead.
by Dick Adler
