Eugéne Tarpon, the private-eye protagonist from Manchette’s No Room at the Morgue, appears once more for a characteristically brisk and brutal story full of unexpected comedy and feeling.

Sex, drugs, and . . . murder. Private eye Eugène Tarpon (previously seen in Jean-Patrick Manchette’s No Room at the Morgue) returns for another punishing round against the forces of greed and malfeasance. Along the way he drags his only friends, Charlotte Malrakis and Jean-Baptiste Haymann, through some gruesome episodes of their own. In Skeletons in the Closet, Manchette aims his dark humor at corruption at the highest “spiritual” and political levels. A savage page-turner with a heart.