Adapted as a major motion picture, The Gunman, starring Sean Penn, Javier Bardem, Idris Elba and Ray Winstone, directed by Pierre Morel (Taken). Martin Terrier is a hired killer who wants out of the game - so he can settle down and marry his childhood sweetheart. After all, that's why he took up this profession! But "the company" won't let him go; they have other plans. Once again, the gunman must assume the prone firing position. A tour de force, this violent tale shatters as many illusions about life and politics as it does bodies. Jean-Patrick Manchette subjects his characters and the reader alike to a fierce exercise in style. This tightly plotted, corrosive parody of "the success story" is widely considered to be Manchette's masterpiece. The Prone Gunman is a classic of modern noir.
"For Manchette and the generation of writers who followed him, the crime novel is no mere entertainment, but a means to strip bare the failures of society, ripping through veils of appearance, deceit, and manipulation to the greed and violence that are the society's true engines."
Boston Globe
"There's not a superfluous word or overdone effect . . . one of the last cool, compact and shockingly original crime novels Manchette left as his legacy to modern noir fiction."
New York Times
"For the first time readers can experience in English translation the masterful thriller considered Manchette's finest, proof positive that the French knew what they were talking about when they labeled this sort of novel 'noir'."
