Nazis in the Metro

A cult detective novel of anarcho-communist-fascist intrigue in late twentieth-century Paris

A 78-year-old man is attacked in the basement of an apartment building in the south of Paris, brutally beaten and left for dead. Reading the story in the newspaper the next morning, Gabriel Lecouvreur—AKA private detective Le Poulpe—recognizes the victim's name as that of a once-gifted and controversial author, Andre Sloga, who had slipped into obscurity. Rumor has it that Sloga had become an alcoholic after being dropped by his publishing house.

But Lecouvreur discovers that Sloga had in fact been hard at work on an explosive book exposing the scandals of a prominent industrialist and his family. Sloga's research had taken him deep into Paris's political underworld, to the place where communists and anarchists meet fascists. Plenty of characters on any side might have wanted him dead, and Lecouvreur sets himself the task of finding who among them acted on that impulse.

DIDER DAENINCKX is France's leading political crime writer. He was born in 1949 on the outskirts of Paris, and is known for his leftist politics. He is the author of more than forty books, including A Very Profitable War and Murder in Memoriam, also published by Melville House. Also a journalist and author of literary fiction, he won the 2012 Prix Goncourt de la Nouvelle for his short-story collection L'Espoire en contrebande.

ANNA MOSCHOVAKIS is a translator, editor and author of two volumes of poetry. She has won fellowships from the New York foundation for the arts and the Fund for Poetry, and a translation fellowship from Le Centre National du Livre.