Michel Hartog, an architect, is made fabulously wealthy by the sudden death of his brother and sister-in-law. Along with their riches, he inherits the responsibility of caring for their spoiled young son, Peter. Michel, known to employ the damaged and ill, uses his wealth to have a shockingly beautiful young woman released from an insane asylum to look after Peter. Julie Ballanger is rightfully suspicious of her new patron, who immediately supplies her with alcohol (which mixes poorly with her medications).
Four semi-competent thugs have been hired to execute Julie and Peter, but they bungle the kidnapping, and their captives escape. Racing toward a labyrinthine estate in the mountains with her young charge, Julie hopes to find her employer and safety--in fact, she finds neither.
Donald Nicholson-Smith's 2013 translation of Jean-Patrick Manchette's The Mad and the Bad (originally published in French in 1972) is the first into English, and is introduced here by American crime writer James Sallis. The plot is straightforward, and the characters' motives are fairly simple, if profoundly disquieting: to kill, to survive, to inflict pain or to avoid it. The bulk of the story is devoted to character sketches and explorations of those simple, disturbing motivations. Nicholson-Smith's translation is unadorned, a perfect match for Manchette's style, which is sparse and tersely written but with an artistic eye for detail. The dialogue is spare, almost dreamlike, and the settings tend toward the cinematic. The Mad and the Bad is odd and gruesome, but maintains a twisted sense of humor throughout. --Julia Jenkins, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia