Gallic Noir. Pascal Garnier

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      Pascal Garnier

      Pascal Garnier was born in Paris in 1949. The prize-winning author of over sixty books, he remains a leading figure in contemporary French literature, in the tradition of Georges Simenon. He died in 2010.

      Emily Boyce

      Emily Boyce is in-house translator and editor at Gallic Books.

      Jane Aitken

      Jane Aitken studied history at St Annes College, Oxford. She is a publisher and translator from the French.

      Melanie Florence

      Melanie Florence teaches at The University of Oxford and translates from the French.

      ‘Wonderful … Properly noir’ Ian Rankin

      ‘Garnier plunges you into a bizarre, overheated world, seething death, writing, fictions and philosophy. He’s a trippy, sleazy, sly and classy read’ A. L. Kennedy

      ‘Horribly funny … appalling and bracing in equal measure. Masterful’ John Banville

      ‘Ennui, dislocation, alienation, estrangement – these are the colours on Garnier’s palette. His books are out there on their own: short, jagged and exhilarating’ Stanley Donwood

      ‘The combination of sudden violence, surreal touches and bonedry humour have led to Garnier’s work being compared with the films of Tarantino and the Coen brothers’ Sunday Times

      ‘Deliciously dark … painfully funny’ New York Times

      ‘A mixture of Albert Camus and JG Ballard’ Financial Times

      ‘A brilliant exercise in grim and gripping irony; makes you grin as well as wince’ Sunday Telegraph

      ‘A master of the surreal noir thriller – Luis Buñuel meets Georges Simenon’ Times Literary Supplement

      Boxes

      The Front Seat Passenger

      The Islanders

      Moon in a Dead Eye

      ‘Garnier’s world exists in the cracks and margins of ours; just off-key, often teetering on the surreal, yet all too plausible. His mordant literary edge makes these succinct novels stimulating and rewarding’ Sunday Times

      ‘Small but perfectly formed darkest noir fiction told in spare, mordant prose … Recounted with disconcerting matter-of-factness, Garnier’s work is surreal and horrific in equal measure’ Guardian

      ‘Tense, strange, disconcerting and slyly funny’ Sunday Times

      ‘Combines a sense of the surreal with a ruthless wit’ The Observer

      ‘Devastating and brilliant’ Sunday Times

      ‘Bleak, often funny and never predictable’ The Observer

      ‘Reminiscent of Joe Orton and the more impish films of Alfred Hitchcock and Claude Chabrol’ Sunday Times

      ‘Brief, brisk, ruthlessly entertaining … Garnier makes bleakness pleasurable’ John Powers, NPR

      ‘This is tough, bloody stuff, but put together with a cunning intelligence’ Sunday Times

      ‘A guaranteed grisly thriller’ ShortList

      ‘Garnier’s world exists in the cracks and margins of ours; just off-key, often teetering on the surreal, yet all too plausible. His mordant literary edge makes these succinct novels stimulating and rewarding’ Sunday Times

      Boxes

      The Front Seat Passenger

      The Islanders

      Moon in a Dead Eye

      by Pascal Garnier

      Gallic Books

      London

      A Gallic Book

       Boxes

      First published in France as Cartons by Zulma, 2012

      Copyright © Zulma, 2012

      English translation copyright © Gallic Books, 2015

      First published in Great Britain in 2015 by Gallic Books

       The Front Seat Passenger

      First published in France as La Place du mort by Zulma, 2010

      Copyright © Zulma, 2010

      English Translation copyright © Gallic Books, 2014

      First published in Great Britain in 2014 by Gallic Books

       The Islanders

      First published in France as Les Insulaires by Zulma, 2010

      Copyright © Zulma, 2010

      English translation copyright © Gallic Books, 2014

      First published in Great Britain in 2014 by Gallic Books

       Moon in a Dead Eye

      First published in France as Lune captive dans un œil mort by Zulma, 2009

      Copyright © Zulma, 2009

      English translation copyright © Gallic Books, 2013

      First published in Great Britain in 2013 by Gallic Books

      This book is copyright under the Berne Convention

      No reproduction without permission

      All rights reserved

      A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

      ISBN 978-1-910477-5-95

      Typeset in Fournier MT by Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

      Falkirk, Stirlingshire

      Printed in the UK by CPI (CR0 4YY)

      Contents

       Boxes

       The Front Seat Passenger

       The Islanders

       Moon in a Dead Eye

      Boxes

       translated from the French by Melanie Florence

       For Laurence

      Brice sat on a metal trunk he had struggled to close, with a silly little rhyme going round and round in his head: ‘An old man lived in a cardboard box / With a squirrel, a mouse and a little red fox.’ Cardboard boxes: he was completely surrounded by them, in piles stretching from floor to ceiling, so that in order to go from one room to another it was necessary to turn sideways on, like in an Egyptian wall painting. That said, there was no longer any reason to go into another room since, boxes aside, they were all as empty as the fridge and the household drawers. He was the sole survivor of the natural disaster that at one time or another strikes us all, known as moving house.

      Following a terrible night’s sleep in a room which had already ceased to be his, he had stripped the bed of its sheets, quilt and pillows, and stuffed it all into a big checked plastic bag he had set aside the night before. He had a quick wash, taking care not to spray toothpaste on the mirror, and dutifully inspected the place in case he had forgotten something. But no, apart from a piece of string about a metre and a half long which he unthinkingly wound round his hand, there was