Introducing the February selection for The James Bond Book Club.
This month we’re diving into the darker corners of crime fiction and celebrating the reissuing of Jean-Patrick Manchette’s bloodthirsty thriller, Fatale. First released in 1977 and now recognised as a cornerstone of modern noir, Fatale is a ruthless, razor-sharp novel that strips the thriller down to its bare essentials.
At Ian Fleming Publications we are drawn to stories that interrogate the figure of the professional killer – and Fatale offers one of the most bracing reframings of that role. Like Bond, our protagonist Aimée Joubert is a highly trained operative who kills on demand, operates behind carefully constructed identities, and moves through international spaces with lethal efficiency. But where Bond’s violence is embedded within the narrative authority of the state, Fatale arrives after that framework has begun to fray.
Aimée operates in a world where ideology offers no shelter, and professionalism is stripped of meaning. This shift in perspective is what makes Fatale so unsettling. By presenting a figure recognisably close to the spy archetype, yet removing the moral scaffolding that traditionally surrounds it, Manchette exposes the mechanics of violence without reassurance or redemption. There are no heroes here.
Drop-dead gorgeous and lethally efficient, Aimée is a killer with a cool head and a taste for chaos. She arrives in the backwater town of Bléville – a festering stew of grudges, corruption, and small-town rot – ready to make a killing. It's a game she’s played before: stir up trouble, pit the locals against one another, then disappear with blood on her hands and money in her pocket. But this time, something breaks and the game turns on her.
Jean-Patrick Manchette transformed the crime novel into a weapon of satire and stylish mayhem. Fatale is his bloodiest, funniest, and most brilliantly unhinged work: a riot of revenge, farce, and gleeful destruction.
The Times – ‘France’s king of noir fiction… He writes with a bleak, tragic beauty’
The Big Issue – ‘Shocking, funny, sad, smart and cool… A macabre delight from start to finish’
The Economist – ‘Manchette’s books are all action, unfolding with a laconic efficiency that would make his killers proud.’
New York Times – ‘I’d rather read Manchette than many contemporary noir writers.’
