pickI haven‘t been reading as much, but I finally finished a book this month. Pushkin Vertigo republishes classic foreign mysteries. This short French gem revolves around a murderous love triangle between an elderly funeral director, his beautiful young wife, and a luckless man. Trigger warning for forceful sexual situations, but this is a pulp noir.
pickFrédéric Dard is hailed as "the French master of noir" & this is definitely a slice of noir-tinged domestic doom. It's a slim, pithy book with staccato sentences that are a pleasure to read. Dard takes us into dreary small-town France. Grotesque male entitlement, jealousy & competition are the ruin of many men & the narrator himself isn't exempt from the misogyny that underlies sexual obsession. Taut, tense, & brimming with existential despair.
The Gravediggers' Bread | 
