taut storytelling about the paradox that is urban France, in this case Marseilles, a melting pot that refuses to melt. The ingredients are all there the italian, portuguese, spanish, moroccan, algerian, tunisian, senegalese and more. The “natives” are restless. They are all French but some are more french than others… A procedural and revenge thriller, drugs, weapons, race all play a part. The eventual hero is flawed, his female interests are flawed (from the jamaican hooker on, and the unrequited arab french literature masters’ student, the reporter and more), his old friends are flawed (on the other side of the law, and now dead in consecutive murders), his attempt at cooling down the tensions in the project are flawed (the youth couldn’t care less, the cops couldn’t care less, the mafia and crime lords couldn’t care less), hell the National Front couldn’t care less (a race war fueled by the drug trade would suit their purposes). Thus we have a great urban drama, we get the flavour of a town, reflections on a mood, a city in full, the Mediterannean noir crime thriller is born. Would be perfect in the original French, still this translation delivers the goods.