In 1965, the Moroccan opposition politician Mehdi Ben Barka disappears in Paris. His fate was never officially confirmed although the assumption had always been that he had been kidnapped and killed for his opposition to the regime in Morocco. Manchette picks that story as the base of his first novel and weaves a story of what might have happened (without mentioning the actual case).

But his story does not start with a kidnapping. It starts with everyone's reaction to the death of Henri Butron - a man who apparently was not exactly innocent. We get Henri's story from three different viewpoints - the people who knew him, a tape he recorded before his death in which he tells us his own story and the people who listened to his tape - the African mercenaries/politicians who are at the base of the story - even if it takes awhile for that to become clear.

Henri is a man without convictions but a man who is ready to adopt anyone's convictions if it will help him in finding something to do (or a girl to seduce). He shifts between the far left an the far right, he scandalizes everyone and he just lives his life - until he gets himself in the middle of a kidnapping and a cover-up organized by people supporting the regime in a third-world African nation (with a little bit of help from the French police). That's when he records his tape - and that's what we know must happen - because the novel starts with him being dead.

I've read one of Manchette's later novels ([The Prone Gunman]) and this one is less polished in some ways - it is a good first novel but it almost sounds too much in places - the later book had a better balance in some ways. But despite that, it is a clear picture of a country in turmoil, of a world where things are moving too fast and where money and self-interest (and sex) rule.

Using real-life events can backfire but it works here - Manchette finds a way to tell the story in a way that sounds as if it might have been while keeping it in his fictional world. It is noir - as is most of his work. And it is walking very close to crossing the line into offensive and gross - without ever really doing it.

Manchette's style will probably be too dark and too cynical and offensive for a lot of people. But that's where some of the power of the novel lays in. I still like it. ( )

This was the second of two crime novels Manchette planned to write with Jean-Pierre Bastid, but in the event only Laissez bronzer les cadavres was published as a collaboration, and L'affaire N'Gustro, although a joint idea, was written by Manchette on his own.

The story was obviously inspired by the kidnapping and presumed murder of Moroccan politician Mehdi Ben Barka in Paris in 1965, which Bastid and Manchette had investigated together, and several of the characters have names that resemble those of people involved in the Ben Barka case.

This isn't really a j'accuse, though: Manchette takes the general turpitude of the establishment for granted, and doesn't really consider it worth the effort of attacking. He reserves most of his satirical ammunition for his fellow Soixante-huitards and the post-colonial politicians they are trying to help. The first-person narrator of most of the book is Henri Bruton, a young man who has taken up radical politics without the slightest conviction (first on the extreme right, then on the far left) simply because of the extra possibilities it gives him for getting into good fights and picking up girls. In between chapters of Henri's recorded "confession", we get a caustic commentary from the two cynical and self-interested African conspirators who are listening to the tape.

It's all rather hectic: Manchette seems to have crammed in most of the important plot elements of A bout de souffle, Rebel without a cause, A clockwork orange and Mrs Robinson before we even arrive at the African connection. And the whole thing is only 170 pages long. It's very politically incorrect in many different ways, and some of the violence in the early chapters is a bit hard to take. But it's supremely stylish in a Belmondo-takes-his-shirt-off-with-subtitles kind of way, and the language is always sharp, with some lovely noir similes (in the middle of a gunfight: "...la vitrine d’un fruits et primeurs qui dégringole comme un piano préparé").

Definitely a period piece, but I enjoyed it. ( )