Loser's Corner

Varenne, Antonin

MacLehose Press

Spine creased, cover worn. Shipped from the U.K. All orders received before 3pm sent that weekday.

Retribution Road

Literature & Fiction

Literary

Quercus Publishing

1871. Pete Ferguson is a wanted man. An army deserter, hunted for murder in Oregon, not to mention theft and arson in Nebraska. Taking the name of Billy Webb, he is hired by bison hunters, but leaves after a bloody dispute. He then takes the Comancheros Road, which he follows to Mexico, and then to Guatemala . . . Whatever he does, wherever he goes, Pete is a magnet for trouble and seems incapable of making the right choices. The violence that follows him keeps him away from those he loves: his brother Oliver, still on the Fitzpatrick ranch with Aileen, Alexandra and Arthur Bowman. It is a woman who will change his destiny, an Indigenous woman driven out of her lands. To save her, Ferguson will sabotage an attempted coup d'état and together, they will go to the Equator that has become Ferguson's grail, and where the malevolent forces governing this world must finally be defeated.

Equator

Bed of Nails

Winner of the Prix Quai du Polar, Antoin Varenne is a rising star in the exciting new wave of French crime fiction. Hard-boiled Paris police lieutenant Richard Guérin thought he knew the depths of human tragedy and perversion during his years investigating suicide cases—not to mention his childhood, raised by his prostitute mother (who left him nothing but her foul-mouthed parrot). But when a slew of cases that are way too bizarre to be straightforward suicides end up on his desk, Guérin begins to suspect that he is up against a nihilistic evil beyond anything he’s encountered before. First, there is Alan Musgrave, an American man who bleeds himself to death on stage during a sick S&amp;M show in an underground Paris nightclub. Another runs naked into traffic with arms outstretched and is splattered to pulp by a heavy truck. Yet another hurls himself from a museum balcony to death by impalement on a whale skeleton. Guérin’s corrupt police colleagues ridicule his determination to find the connections between these horrifying deaths. Yet he presses on, plunging into the seamy sadomasochistic underbelly of the City of Lights that most never see. Unexpected help comes from a friend of Musgrave’s, an eccentric and resourceful rich American named John Nichols who has recently arrived in Paris toting a bow and arrows. The bloody trail leads them to the upper reaches of both the Parisian police force and the American embassy, while Guérin begins to suspect that the ultimate answer may lie somewhere in Nichols’s past. In Bed of Nails, Varenne does for Paris what James Ellroy did for vintage Los Angeles: He expertly throws a bright light on a fashionable city’s hideous hidden face.

United States

Parisian street cop and amateur boxer George "The Wall" Crozat is racking up an impressive knockout record in the world of underground boxing. Failing to translate his small-time boxing success into a decent source of income, however, and unable to finance his nasty prostitution habit with his meager earnings as a police officer, he contemplates a drastic career change. Finally, unable to resist a tempting offer to make some cash using his fists as en enforcer, he unwittingly becomes a pawn in a very dangerous game. Meanwhile, we learn the unsettling story of the young socialist Pascale Verini, exiled to the Algerian front during the 1957 Algerian War. As soon as he gets to Algeria, Verini is transferred to a nightmare "farm" in deepest Sahara, where North African prisoners of war are mercilessly tortured and killed by the French, away from prying eyes and ears. Prix Quais du Polar winner Antonin Varenne draws on his father's experiences of France's colonialist past to illuminate one of the darkest pages of France's colonial history, even as he details the grim reality of being a beat cop in present-day Paris. The result is a darkly personal, elegantly gritty tale of conspiracy, torture, corruption, and revenge.

Genre Fiction

Winner of the Prix Quai du Polar, Antoin Varenne is a rising star in the exciting new wave of French crime fiction. Hard-boiled Paris police lieutenant Richard Guerin thought he knew the depths of human tragedy and perversion during his years investigating suicide cases--not to mention his childhood, raised by his prostitute mother (who left him nothing but her foul-mouthed parrot).  But when a slew of cases that are way too bizarre to be straightforward suicides end up on his desk, Guerin begins to suspect that he is up against a nihilistic evil beyond anything he's encountered before.  First, there is Alan Musgrave, an American man who bleeds himself to death on stage during a sick S&M show in an underground Paris nightclub. Another runs naked into traffic with arms outstretched and is splattered to pulp by a heavy truck. Yet another hurls himself from a museum balcony to death by impalement on a whale skeleton. Guerin's corrupt police colleagues ridicule his determination to find the connections between these horrifying deaths. Yet he presses on, plunging into the seamy sadomasochistic underbelly of the City of Lights that most never see. Unexpected help comes from a friend of Musgrave's, an eccentric and resourceful rich American named John Nichols who has recently arrived in Paris toting a bow and arrows. The bloody trail leads them to the upper reaches of both the Parisian police force and the American embassy, while Guerin begins to suspect that the ultimate answer may lie somewhere in Nichols's past. In Bed of Nails, Varenne does for Paris what James Ellroy did for vintage Los Angeles: He expertly throws a bright light on a fashionable city's hideous hidden face.

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Mystery

Trois mille chevaux vapeur

ALBIN MICHEL

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Books by Varenne, Antonin

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Varenne, Antonin. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Loser's Corner

Retribution Road

Retribution Road

Equator

Bed of Nails

Loser's Corner

Bed of Nails

Loser's Corner

Bed of Nails

Trois mille chevaux vapeur