Gallic Noir
Volume 2
'Garnier's crime novels add significantly to the latest renaissance for this type of dark narrative.' Publishers Weekly Volume 2 includes The Front Seat Passenger, in which Fabien discovers his wife died in a car accident alongside her lover, and decides to track down that man's widow; Moon in a Dead Eye, in which the paranoia of the residents of a gated retirement village in the south of France spins out of control; The Islanders, whose protagonist Olivier finds himself thrown back together with a childhood friend with whom he shares a dark secret; and Boxes, which tells the story of troubled children's author Brice, 'the sole survivor of the natural disaster that at one time or another strikes us all, known as "moving house"'.
Pascal Garnier, who died in March 2010, was a talented novelist, short story writer, children’s author and painter. From his home in the mountains of the Ardèche, he wrote fiction in a noir palette with a cast of characters drawn from ordinary provincial life. Though his writing is often very dark in tone, it sparkles with quirkily beautiful imagery and dry wit. Garnier’s work has been likened to the great thriller writer, Georges Simenon.
Melanie Florence teaches at the University of Oxford and translates from the French.
Emily Boyce is a translator and editor. She was shortlisted for the French Book Office New Talent in Translation Award in 2008, the French-American Translation Prize in 2016, and the Scott Moncrieff Prize in 2021. She lives in London.
Jane Aitken is a publisher and translator from the French.
