Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Confusing at times, but good, 22 Oct 2002
As one might surmise from the title, this French procedural starts with the discovery of a young Thai girl who has been raped and tortured to death. Set in 1980, this murder sets in motion a stunningly complicated investigation by Inspector Dacquin and his team, which winds its way through immigrant worker politics, the international heroin trade, French-Iranian relations, child prostitution, Turkish domestic politics, police and government corruption, a private sex club, blackmail, the CIA, front companies, and most of all, the grimy Sentier district in Paris.The somewhat choppy narrative takes place over a month, and is somewhat reminiscent of the TV show NYPD Blue, with lots of cutting between different locations and perspectives. It's a bit off-putting at first, but by the second half of the story, there have been enough new murders and complications so that one isn't so distracted. There book does suffer from a lack of distinction amongst all the cops. Other than the lead inspector Dacquin, the other cops are interchangeable and unmemorable, which is a bit of a problem since there are at least four of them running around at any one point. Manotti treats them more as Dacquin's pawns than real characters, which is a bit of a shame. Similarly, there are a huge number of people interviewed and interrogated, and they too, tend to run together. To keep everything straight, I recommend readers keep a running list of whom everybody is as they read. It should be said that the book is unrelentingly grim and cynical, which some may not care for. The French cops don't mess around, beating suspects, blackmailing informers, and generally operating by whatever means necessary. It has one of the better climaxes I've come across recently though, very realistic I felt. And there's a fun little epilogue which really ends thing on just the right note. Manotti has written at least two other Dacquin books, but they've not been translated into English. FYI, this book is also known as "Dark Path", which is the more literal translation of the original French title. Also, Manotti is a pseudonym.
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3.0 out of 5 stars
You may not trust Parisian police again, 17 Mar 2009
Dominique Manotti's Rough Trade (Arcadia Books) is set in the gritty immigrant district of Le Sentier in Paris of the 1980s, when left-wing anarchists, drug runners, Turkish workers, corrupt policemen and child prostitutes all melded into an explosive cauldron of disaffection and violence. The turbulence of times left scarcely anyone untouched. Even Dacquin, the protagonist of this book, supposedly a refined man of intelligence and culture, doesn't think twice before maltreating witnesses and suspects, or blackmailing and sodomising a Turkish illegal immigrant into becoming an informant. Manotti is a cynic, evidently, but has an ear for dialogue and description. Several strands of the story unfold - heroin smuggling, internal police affairs, governmental corruption - but, as the tale progresses, are seen to converge. Real events of the day, including the struggle of immigrant workers to be legalised, and porn clubs that attracted the high and mighty in the government - are neatly interspersed into the narrative. A gripping, brutal book which won the French Crime Writers Association prize for best thriller of the year.
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