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Fatale
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  • Published: 5 February 2026
  • ISBN: 9781529980028
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: Audio Download
  • RRP: $34.99

Fatale

Formats & editions
Paperback
26 May 2026
EBook
5 Feb 2026
Audiobook
5 Feb 2026
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Radical, ruthless - and razor-sharp. Welcome to the brutal, revolutionary crime thrillers of Jean-Patrick Manchette, reissued by Vintage Classics in a major new celebratory series

Murder isn’t always ugly.

Aimée is drop-dead gorgeous, razor-sharp, and lethally efficient. 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.

PRAISE FOR JEAN-PARICK MANCHETTE

‘Manchette was Le Homme... We must revere him now and rediscover him this very instant. ’ James Ellroy

‘Manchette is Camus on overdrive... He deserves much the same attention’ James Sallis

‘Manchette is legend among all of the crime writers I know, and with good reason: his novels never fail to stun and thrill from page one’ Duane Swierczynski
  • Published: 5 February 2026
  • ISBN: 9781529980028
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: Audio Download
  • RRP: $34.99
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About the author

Jean-Patrick Manchette

Jean-Patrick Manchette (1942–1995) was a crime novelist, screenwriter, critic, and translator. In 1971 he published his first novel and went on to establish a new genre of French novel, the neo-polar. Vintage Classics publishes his Fatale, Nada, No Room at the Morgue and Skeletons in the Closet.
J-P

Also by Jean-Patrick Manchette

Nada
No Room at the Morgue
Skeletons in the Closet
See all

Praise for Fatale

France's king of noir fiction…he writes with a bleak, tragic beauty

The Times

Shocking, funny, sad, smart and cool… A macabre delight from start to finish

Big Issue

A fist between the eyes, leaving the reader reeling… So devastating it takes your breath away

Complete Review

Manchette's books are all action, unfolding with a laconic efficiency that would make his killers proud

The Economist

I’d rather read Manchette than many contemporary noir writers.

Sarah Weinman, New York Times

This pair of explosive, absurd French crime thrillers – with plenty of oh là là and even more zut alors – will cheer you up and help you forget the desperate weather… these [are] funny, nasty, perpetually surprising books

The Times