I very much enjoyed this slice of French suburban noir. The plot was unpredictable and quirky, the characters mostly unlikeable and sociopathic. The story was fast-moving and gripping, with unexpected episodes of violence peppered with black humour.
I've always loved quirky French thrillers and am now very pleased to have discovered, in Pascal Garnier, a French author who writes novels in a similar vein. I will definitely be reading more of his books and recommending him to others.

This review will not make sense. I disliked the miserable people in this story and couldn't care less about them. Fabien's wife is killed in an auto accident with her lover. It is a shock to Fabien, whose life then spirals out of control—murder and mayhem follow. It is a shock to me that these two accident victims are the only characters I sympathized with. Even more surprising was the fact that I could not put the book down. Garnier's abrupt, gritty, but still poetic writing style sustained me on the twisty road of a plot. "She floated in life like a foetus in formaldehyde ... sometimes Fabien made her stop so that he could talk to a cow"—absurd! Yet, it all works. I was proud of Garnier’s intense brevity; amazed that I could feel such strong emotion with so few words. It has been eight hours since I finished this book and I still don’t know whether to laugh or cry. This is my first time reading Garnier; I simply don't know what to make of him. What I do know is that I will have to read another Garnier novel.

An interesting tale from the pen of Pascal Garnier, about a man whose wife is killed in a car crash, but who then finds out that she was in the car with a married man with whom she was having an affair. He decides to stalk the man's widow, and ends up embroiled in a disastrous relationship with her.
It's a pretty twisted tale, that somehow manages to keep you engaged as it spirals out of control. My only gripe was with the translation, which was pretty clunky. It doesn't start well, with the opening paragraph incorrectly translating French pop rock band Les Rita Mitsouko to some singer called Rita Mitsouko. At some points it felt like someone had just run the text through a translation tool, rather than lovingly recreate Garnier's wonderful prose in another language. A real shame.

I received a copy of this novel from the publisher through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review and I really enjoyed it.

I discovered Pascal Garnier about a year ago through the ebook versions of his short novels published by Gallic Books and I am already a die hard fan. Garnier is first rate. His short novels are compelling, tense, darkly humorous, and dripping with noir atmosphere and characters. They are definitely meant to be finished in one sitting. I just can’t imagine stopping before the end.

I don’t want to give away much of the plot so I will be brief. Our humorously quirky and neurotic protagonist in The Front Seat Passenger has recently become a widower when his wife dies in a car accident. He is confused by the circumstances because the accident occurred far from their home and not in a place that she was supposed to be. He then learns that she was not alone in the car (she was the front seat passenger), so he not only has to deal with her death, which he finds most inconvenient, but also the fact that she was having an affair, which he finds embarrassing. Frankly, he is so odd in his twisted perspective that I found myself alternating between finding him humorous and being disgusted by his shallowness and lack of emotional maturity.

For understandable reasons, he is curious to find out about “the other man;” then for reasons that make sense really only to him, decides stalks that man’s wife. The interaction grows more and more tense and uncomfortable as he gets closer and closer to her. He realizes, as anyone would, that he is treading on dangerous ground and I found myself squirming as potential pitfalls started to crop up everywhere. Not wanting to give away anything, I will say that nothing is as it seems and the story gets darker and darker with each surprise and each unexpected development.

To say this would make an incredible movie is an understatement. Absolutely fantastic classic noir story every bit as tense as Double Indemnity.

5 stars. A classic.

After reading my first Pascal Garnier book last month, 'The Front Seat Passenger' called to me from NetGalley to download it whilst I was supposed to be uploading a review for another book entirely!

I’m so glad I did, as it’s another winning combination of the wry observations of impossibly surreal grim situations and the absence of domestic harmony.

Monsieur Fabien Delorme has a caring, yet distant relationship with his father. Their emotions are fairly constipated, until alcohol is introduced to the conversation encouraging Fabien to spill his guts while his father maintains a bland composure. Bizarrely his deceased mother is referred to by her Christian name, and his father’s display of affection is sparse at best. It’s interesting being a fly on the wall watching them interact from their respective corners.

Following a visit to his father’s house to help him clear out his mother’s things, Fabien returns to an empty home. In the absence of his wife being there to greet him there are three answer phone messages. The first two are innocent enough. But the third is unsettling, as he hears a stranger’s voice telling him there has been an accident and urges him to contact the hospital.

It turns out that even though his beloved Sylvie has been killed in a car crash it’s his world that’s been turned upside down. They didn’t have children. They kept themselves to themselves. So now it was just him and the knowledge that his wife was not alone when she died. He should be able to take comfort in that, but it was such a cruel way to discover that she was having an affair.

Being left without a way to confront her, Fabien makes the unusual decision to focus on stalking the widow of his wife’s lover. He embarks on clandestine methods to get closer to Martine Arnoult, but first he has to get passed her battle-axe friend, Madeleine – a.k.a. the human shield.

Needless to say there’s some top class satirical moments and the spontaneous method of dispatching ‘problems’ as they occur, verging on the unhinged. Stephen King’s ‘Misery’ came to mind at one point, but not everything is as it appears! If one thing is clear it's that Fabien ought to leave dangerous games to the more experienced players.

I’m wowed by the author’s skill of cramming such a vibrant, brilliantly layered world into such a short page span. The terrific one-liners bring clarity to life, death, and the assorted bits in-between. And I’ll hold my hand up. I wasn’t expecting any twist in the tale until one was delivered with precision timing. It's sharp, and very, very clever.

Thank you Net Galley. I enjoyed this classic Pascal Garnier tale very much. Like all his work, that I have read, he is short and to the point. His prose is economical. The impact huge. A highly recommended, book that you have to read at one sitting.

A novella from Pascal Garnier, whom I haven't read before, this is French noir at its best.

After having lost his wife in a car accident, Fabien follows the widow of the man Sylvie died with. He ends up dealing with more than he bargained for.

Garnier shows us characters who appear not to be how you expect them to be, and completely turns your mind with several twists in the unpredictable narrative. The main character is a bit quirky, and instead of grieving, we find him bent on revenge. The mood is dark throughout, with sudden bursts of violence in the end.

After this intriguing thriller I will definitely be exploring more of Garnier's works.

Review copy supplied by publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a rating and/or review.

I haven't read anything by Pascal Garnier before but this had been languishing in paperback on my TBR for quite a long time before I noticed it pop up on Netgalley, so I thought why not bump it up and give it a go.

Well, what a little gem! It's quite short so easily read in a spare couple of hours, which makes a nice change and the translation is excellent as it appears to maintain the French "feel" to the book.

Full of unlikeable psychopaths, written in a tense style with short sentences and abrupt endings, this is a really enjoyable, slightly odd and somewhat gruesome read, a combination that I have discovered I really like!

Thank you to Netgalley for allowing me an electronic copy in exchange for an honest review.