The second in the late Izzo’s Marseilles Trilogy...once again finds Fabio Montale—now at loose ends, after quitting the corruption-riddled Marseilles police force—entangled in somebody else’s troubles. This time it’s his cousin, the beautiful Gélou, whose son has disappeared after running away to be with his Arab girlfriend. Fabio agrees to look for the boy, but he finds instead a hydra-headed tragedy—murder and deceit fueled by the racism that threatens to turn the once vibrant seaport town into a cauldron of violence. This hard-hitting series captures all the world-weariness of the contemporary European crime novel, but Izzo mixes it with a hero who is as virile as he is burned out.
...Fabio Montale, an introspective ex-cop with a placid life based on cronies, aperitifs, and a little fishing, is yanked back into his city’s politically charged underworld. On one single sunny day, a beautiful cousin whom he hasn’t seen in years enlists his help to find her son, a wayward teen-ager, and an old friend is gunned down in front of him on the street ... what makes (Izzo's) work haunting is his...ability to convey the tastes and smells of Marseilles, and the way memory and obligation dog every step his hero takes.
...Ex-cop Fabio Montale, whose compassion puts him at odds with his colleagues and superiors, gets an appeal from his attractive cousin to trace her missing son. Tragically, Montale soon finds the boy was killed by gunmen targeting someone else ... Like the best American practitioners in the genre, Izzo refrains from any sugarcoating of the city he depicts or the broken and imperfect men and women who people it.
Fabio Montale has resigned from a police force even more violent and morally compromised than he is. But you don’t resign from violence itself, and when his beloved cousin Gélou’s son Guitou disappears, Fabio fears the worst. And with reason: The boy, whose first romantic tryst was unwisely set in a borrowed apartment down the hall from Algerian historian Hocine Draoui, is gunned down after he stuck his head out the door in response to Hocine’s screaming ... A bitter, sad and tender salute to a place equally impossible to love or leave. Like George Pelecanos, Izzo connects to individual lives large-scale social, economic and political forces most often encountered in op-ed columns.
