Good food. Good drink. Poetry.
Music. And Women, beautiful women.
Marseilles, vibrant seaport of
sensual pleasure may be a French melting pot for those who come to seek better
lives – Italians, Armenians, Neopolitans, Spainards, Vietnamese, West Indians,
North Africans and Arabs, but it’s a crime-fillled simmering one, always on the
verge of boiling over in Jean-Claude Izzo’s Marseilles
Trilogy, a series that comprises Total
Chaos, Chourmo and Solea. Izzo, who wrote the series between 1995 and his death in 2000 has been called the father of Mediterranean noir. The re-lease of his books this month is part
the launch of Europa Noir.
In Total Chaos Fabio Montale is a cop whose childhood friends become
part of the violent underworld in this city of exiles. Following a youthful crime spree, Fabio
turned against violence, while one friend, Ugo, fled it – only to be dragged
back, and the angriest of the three, Manu, stayed so enmeshed in it, he could
not escape. They remained tied together by loyalty and because of Lole, the
woman they all love – in turns.
After Manu is killed just as he and
Lole plan to leave Marseilles for a better life, Ugo returns to avenge his
death – and is killed in turn. That leaves Fabio who sends Lole away for her
safety as he tries to find cause and identity of Manu’s killer.
While in the midst of
unofficially pursuing the answers to that crime, Fabio gets a call from an
acquaintance whose daughter has disappeared. Mouloud, an Arab who was lured to
France in the 1970s with the promise a good job, a promise that faded when the
factory closed has not heard from his daughter, Leila. His children are among
anew wave of immigrants’ children, whose challenges mirror those Fabio and
friends faced a generation before.
Leila, the rare one in a million on the verge of escaping poverty and
embracing her family’s dreams is completing her university exams at Aix en
Provence. Driss, the angry one,
redirects his aggression into boxing and working at a garage, and Kader works
for an uncle at a grocery store in Paris.
Izzo’s descriptions of racism and subsequent crime unite characters and plot. For Izzo -- and Fabio, Arabs are just the latest in a
line of those who were treated as less than French. Both Izzo and Fabio share a mixed backgrounds and knew discrimination as youths.
Izzo’s observations may give the
reader some understanding of acts beyond understanding -- a sense of the
difficulties that immigrants and their children face in another culture,
difficulties that turn some angry young men into criminals and killers and
their sisters into whores. Driss, a young Arab, who takes up boxing as an
outlet for anger, mirrors in a small way the Chechen immigrant Tamerlan Tsarnaev, whose frustrated inner life can only be imagined.
In Total Chaos big dreams and boundless hope clash with the reality of
economic recession, limited opportunity, violence and life in the housing
projects. In the mix, already fragile families shatter. Danger lurks in the
form of various transnational criminal organizations vying for power. One
marvels that anyone makes it out in tact.
Marseilles is not the only stew in
this trilogy; the books themselves read as mélanges of ingredients of the noir
detective genre. At times the books seem less plotted than improvised; Izzo
tries a little bit of this noir convention here, a pinch of detective trait
there along with a lot of spice to see what develops. Elements of the detective genre are the
ingredients he tosses in the pot. The
most flavorful is his love and knowledge of place describing the neighborhoods,
the streets, the people, the smells -- the ambience that makes Marseilles,
Marseilles.
Add to that: like other fictional
cops, Fabio loves food, listens to many kinds of music including jazz, blues
and rap, cites poetry, and literature. As in other police procedurals Fabio has
a partner, Perol, and a nemesis in the department, Auch. Fabio, like others, is
a loner cop; he has been marginalized because he stood up against police
brutality and racism. He has a journalist friend, Babette, and one detective he
trusts, Loubet.
And like other crime solvers, Fabio
loves but has trouble holding onto women.
That’s only a small problem because they’re drawn like moths to Fabio’s
flames. It’s difficult keeping track of
them all: Muriel, Carmen, Clara, Zina, Rosa, Lole, Babette, Leila, Gelou. And they are all
strikingly beautiful. Fabio, in turn, cannot commit to just one so his current
solution is: a) to be mothered by the
70-year-old next-door neighbor Honorine, a woman who loves to cook, ‘’but she could only cook for a man” (and he’s
that man) b) to make love with West Indian prostitute Mary Lou, another victim
of lost dreams; c) to share information with the journalist Babette – one of
the many women of his past. His
connection to the victim Leila is also romantic; he passed on her invitation to
take him home because he thought she was too young. Noble, yes, but regret takes the form
of odd thinking after he views her raped, dead body: “I should have married
her,” he thinks. This would be less bizarre if he didn’t also think it in the next book Chourmo, when another woman, Gelou, his
cousin, is also a victim. What a solution! If he had just married these women,
he could have prevented their plights. He seems to have a running joke with Babette, who becomes the focus of
the third book, as well; he tells her he should have married her. And finally,
he turns down Mary Lou as a consistent mate; he will not engage in the fantasy
of cop marries hooker to save her from her life. Is Fabio some kind of bachelor tease?
He’s a fickle man who defines love as mostly just the swoony falling part: “I wanted to preserve the best part of those
loves. The beauty of the first glance. The passion of the first night. The
tenderness of the first awakening.”
While crime and racism are the roux that hold this stew together, sensual pleasures give Total Chaos its many flavors. (Consider the food alone: focaccia, cod tongues, cuttlefish pizza, stuffed peppers with creme fraiche). Yet, this reader wonders how a man can get any work done with
so much to distract him. How can a
reader follow the convoluted plot, distracted as I was by Fabio’s
attractions? How can a writer stay on
track?
Izzo doesn’t. He tries everything
out and then systematically rids what will become the Marseilles trilogy of
those ingredients that are of little use to him. Partner Perol wasn’t doing very much anyway,
so why not toss him? Fabio doesn’t need to be a policeman – the job was just a
minor plot part as he seems more involved in unofficial investigations than
assigned ones. He could get as much access
as a former cop, which is what he will be by book’s end.
Lole will also return to Fabio’s arms leading to this reader’s expectation that
the two might spend some time together
-- and we might get to know her a little better. But instead she’s
really just another tied up loose end here. She’ll be conveniently away
visiting her parents in Chourmo, an ingredient Izzo might – or might
not -- use again as he improvises
another flavorful simmering plot.
More to follow on that book in a few
days. . .
To find out more about Europa editions, go to http://www.europaeditions.com
https://www.facebook.com/EuropaWorldNoir
To find out more about Europa editions, go to http://www.europaeditions.com
https://www.facebook.com/EuropaWorldNoir
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