Fatale by Jean-Patrick Manchette (NYRB Classics 1977)

"I am unarmed," said Lorque. "I want to talk to you. Listen here, I don't deserve to die. What have I done except follow the natural impulses of the human race? And even that is saying a lot. We are choirboys compared with our ancestors. Does the sack of Cartagena ring any bells with you? Some of Bléville's bold seafarers were there. I'm not talking about the first sack of Cartagena, that was Sir Francis Drake, but the second, when the French did the sacking. What I've done is nothing alongside the sack of Cartagena. Okay, so I worked a bit on the Atlantic Wall, I had to keep a low profile in South America for a while, then I came back and I've been giving employment to workers and making land productive. I've made my pile in the usual way. Just tell me one outrageous thing, one truly criminal thing, in what I've done, in what the baron had in his files, just name one!"

"I haven't read the baron's files," said Aimée. Lorque tensed and listened hard, apparently striving to determine the precise source of the young woman's voice. "I couldn't care less," Aimée observed. "Do you really imagine I'm interested in your crimes and misdemeanors? You must be joking!"

The Prone Gunman by Jean-Patrick Manchette (City Lights Books 1981)

Martin Terrier had no visible reaction when he grasped that Anne had left for good (if indeed he grasped it). During the night, he had audible reactions: he moaned or maybe groaned in his sleep, making that noise that others had called blabbering and had even tried to decode.

Every now and then, these days, Terrier still blabbers in his sleep. Otherwise, as a waiter in a brasserie, he is normal. He performs his duties properly, even if he is sometimes physically clumsy. It has recently been noted that his clumsiness increases when he drinks. Late at night, young people occasionally have fun buying him drinks until he behaves in an eccentric manner. He has even climbed up on a table and bleated like a sheep, interspersing this with grand operatic arias. Each time he is brought to such extremes, he gets angry and violent immediately afterward. But he is not dangerous, for he has indeed become so very clumsy that when he tries to hit someone, he succeeds only in falling on his face.

He lives in a small apartment.

Three to Kill by Jean-Patrick Manchette (City Lights Books 1976)

There is no way of saying how things will turn out for Georges Gerfaut. In a general way, you can see how things will work out for him, but not in detail. In a general way, the relations of production that contain the reason why Georges is racing along the ring road with diminished reflexes, playing the particular music he is playing, will be destroyed. Perhaps Georges will then show something other than the patience and servility that he has always shown up to now. It is not likely. Once, in a dubious context, he lived through an exciting and bloody adventure; after which, all he could think of to do was to return to the fold. And now, in the fold, he waits. If at this moment, without leaving the fold, Georges is racing around Paris at 145 kilometres per hour, this proves nothing beyond the fact that Georges is of his time. And of his space.