West Coast Blues

Edition excerpt from West Coast Blues (2009): A SAVAGE NOIR THRILLER REUNITING A MASTER CRIME NOVELIST AND A SUPERLATIVE FRENCH CARTOONIST George Gerfaut, aimless young executive and desultory family man, witnesses a murder and finds himself sucked into a spiral of violence involving an exiled war criminal and two hired assassins. Adapting to the exigencies of his new life on the run with shocking ease, Gerfaut abandons his comfortable middle-class life for several months (including a sojourn in the countryside after an attempt to ride the rails turns spectacularly bad) until, joined with a new ally, he finally returns to settle all accounts... with brutal, bloody interest. Released in 2005, West Coast Blues (Le Petit bleu de la c?te ouest) is Tardi's adaptation of a popular 1976 novel by the French crime writer Jean-Patrick Manchette. (The novel had been previously adapted to film under the more literal title Trois hommes ? abattre, and was released in English by the San Francisco-based publisher City Lights under the English version of the same title, 3 to Kill.) Tardi's late-period, looser style infuses Manchette's dark st